World's Most Boring Speech?

I'm delivering a 15-minute speech tomorrow in my Toastmaster's club which may prove to be the world's most boring speech. Well--that's not true. I do have a leg up on Bush (a tip, Mr. President:  look away just occasionally from the teleprompter). But it's hard to get jazzed about a speech I have little enthusiasm for.

Toastmasters has different designations, one of which is "Competent Leader." To achieve this goal, you need to hold a club office and deliver 2 speeches from the Successful Club Series. The Successful Club Series is a group of speeches put together by Toastmasters International on how to organize and conduct good club meetings. 

The supposedly good part about the speeches is that they're already written.  A s a member, you just have to deliver them. However, I'm presenting a Successful Club Speech called "Moments of Truth, " which deals with how members form opinions on Toastmaster clubs based on any number of small episodes such as if they were greeted at the door, did the meeting start on time, were they invited to join, etc.  I find the speech as prepared to be a total snore. "Greet guests warmly and by name." --Really? I have to explain that to people? How about using a little common sense...

So I've "done a Dena" and jazzed up the speech, adding personal examples and reorganizing it. I'm still bored with the topic but I've at least got it to a level I find acceptable.  And that's the key to any speech--make it your own. I have a slight advantage in that I'm peppy and  compensate for lack of interesting content through sheer force of personality. But that's cheating and something I try not to rely too heavily upon. 

So about 90 minutes today will be spent periodically practicing a 15-minute speech. After this, I've got one more speech to do to reach my Competent Leader designation (and how about that--could it be more bland? Might as well congratulate members on reaching barely mediocre status.  I think we should have titles like, "Worthy of Leading World Domination I" status.") and 2 more speeches to reach my Advanced Toastmaster, Bronze designation for having given 20 prepared speeches.

Think of me tomorrow when I'll be reminding people to "greet guests warmly" and "start meetings on time." I just hope my teleprompter works...