College Member Samuel Dannenberg's three-minute speech on the topic "Overcoming silence" was awarded first prize in the Communication Cup competition held at the College on Saturday, 13 August 2022.
Speaking from personal experience as his own world is regretfully becoming progressively more silent, Samuel's talk provided the audience with much food for thought regarding the challenges he is facing. Samuel was also voted in as the Peoples' Choice.
The Communication Cup was very kindly donated by College Fellow Professor John Reynolds (Anatomy Dept) in 2009 and, like the previous four years, the competition took the form of a three-minute presentation on a topic of the Member's choice (anything they are passionate about). Only one PowerPoint slide was permitted.
The three judges were Prof John Reynolds (Anatomy Dept), Assoc Prof Lisa McNeill (Marketing Dept) and Dr Latika Samalia (Anatomy Dept).
A very large audience of appreciative Members thoroughly enjoyed listening to the talks by eight Members. They also voted for the Peoples' Choice Award.
The criteria the judges used to select the winner were:
- Communication style. Was the topic communicated well to the audience?
- Comprehension. Did the presentation help the audience understand the topic?
- Engagement. Was the audience left wanting to know more?
The judges provided constructive feedback to each presenter immediately following their respective talks.
Runner Up went to first-year Member Angela Fu for her talk about “Kakapo courtship/dating” which included the clever use of humour!
Highly Commended was Sebastian Langdon-Macmillan for a very informative and personal speech titled “A little about Asperger's Syndrome”.
The College congratulates all the participants for their speeches which were of an extremely high and impressive standard.
College Leader Antonia Martin, who was also the winner of the 2021 Communication Cup, very ably organised the entire competition from beginning to end, and acted as Master of Ceremonies on the night. Thank very, Antonia!
(Story by the Master, Dr Charles Tustin)
