It is hardly surprising that an American won this year’s Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking—Americans make up nearly three-quarters of the roughly 280,000 Toastmaster members worldwide.
The winner this year, however, was the youngest person to win the championship in the contest’s history. Twenty-five-year-old Ryan Avery from Portland, Ore., took away top honors in a grueling six-month contest.
Avery out spoke 30,000 participants from 116 countries, including eight other finalists at the championship event in Florida on Aug. 15–18.
A member of Gen Y, the generation born after the ‘70s who grew up communicating electronically, text messaging, emailing, twittering, and uploading to Facebook to make a point, Avery believes the win is significant for his age group.
“I am part of the ‘like’ generation where I used to say ‘like’ every other word,” he told The Epoch Times by phone.
He says it was not nerves that drove him to take up Toastmasters.
It was not until he saw a video of himself, recorded as part of his job, that he realized he had the Gen Y affliction of communicating badly and using fillers every couple of words, which he now describes as “extremely distracting.”
“I showed it to my Dad and he said, ‘Man you need to join Toastmasters,’” Avery explained, a move for which his Dad stumped up the first six months and now reckons it was the best $50 he has ever spent.
There are fears that Gen Y is losing the ability to communicate face to face, Avery said, describing the sorts of comments that are made about his generation: “Hey, pull out a handwritten letter and write a thank you note, or communicate without saying ‘you know’ every five words!”
As director of Marketing for the Special Olympics in Oregon, Avery took up the challenge to win the international competition, not only to upgrade communication skills for his job but also to make a point about his peers.
