My experience as an Emcee

In every experience, bad or good, there is bound to be something that you can learn from it. That is the attitude that I carried towards the event today.

I'll use a few words to sum up my feelings -- exhilaration, frustration, heart-attacks but great sense of achievement. I won't say that the whole event was executed in the best fashion, but all in all, it was an enriching experience. A simple few words may not be able to fully describe how I felt.

So what did I learn from this?
To be honest, organising an event in this small scale is not as easy as it seems. Alot of hard work has been put in by the various committee members. Like how Ben commented, 台上一分钟，台下十年功. To translate it literally, it means a minute on stage equates to 10 years off the stage. I fully agree. Whatever will go wrong, has gone wrong. But that does not mean that the situation screwed up, there were merely hiccups along the way, which in my opinion, is normal. The imperfections of the event served as precious lessons. One has to learn from the mistakes in order to grow. I learned that an emcee has to be adaptable, because constant changes are being made and we need to adjust quick enough, to know what to say and what not to say on stage. Impromptu speaking is definitely one skill that I need to hone. An emcee needs to multi-task as we try to coordinate between various parties, communicating with organising chairperson, photographer, videographer, timer, guest speaker etc because the emcee is the linking point. Different parties gave instructions of various versions. When there is so much confusion, you just have to exercise your judgement.
Does it sound like the whole event is a flop? Of course not! I personally feel that it was a great success, in fact, it was better than last year! It brought together members of the public, toastmasters and businessmen, its a great way for people to network. I'm also happy to find a good number of teenagers amongst the audience, public speaking skills definitely deserve more attention than just academic abilities.

The committee has a dream of making this a Nation-wide event next year. Will this be a dream come true or remain as a dream? We'll have to wait and see...

Till then, I look forward to more of such opportunities.