PF 2009 Part 9 (conclusion)

One thing we haven’t discussed yet is prep time. To be honest, two minutes of prep time isn’t enough to scratch your nose, so its use must be carefully doled out. I would simply suggest that a minute go before the 3rd or 4th speeches, so that the team can compare notes on what to win with, then 30 seconds each to do the same for the two wrap-up speeches. Hear what your partner has to say before you start talking, in other words. There might be a piece of evidence you might not have thought of, or some point that would have otherwise eluded you. It is a team activity, after all. Use the team’s brain, not just your own.

Anyhow, the rest of PF plays out in a most predictable way, and one need simply keep in mind that the point of each speech is to win the round. The two-minute speeches are just long enough to explain to the judge 1) why your opponent loses, and 2) why you win. Explaining either one of these without the other is not good enough. “Our opponents’ Big Idea was this, and this evidence overwhelming disproved it, while our Big Idea was this, and this evidence overwhelming proved it, ergo, vote for us,” or words to that effect. What is true of crystallization in LD is true in PF. Explain to the judge why you win, and show it on the flow. We win because we made this argument for our side, which was not suitably refuted, and because we made this argument against our opponent, which was not suitably refuted. Give me a summary, with a roadmap. Briefly. Anything less is probably not enough.

I’m not quite sure what the GXF is supposed to be about, but I would suggest that it will vary from round to round. If it were me, I’d just hammer home any point I was winning, and explain why any point I wasn’t winning didn’t matter. Same as LD. I wonder, though. By this time in the round (and this is also true of LD, although, of course, there’s no more CX toward the end of things), most judges’ minds will be mostly made up. So maybe what it boils down to, if you think you’re winning, figure out why you’re winning and hammer that home, whereas if you think you’re losing, figure out why and hammer something else home, or prove why the reason your losing is not a reason to lose. Tough thing to do, though.

By the same token, the last one-minute speech can’t really be much more than an attempt by the final speaker to write the judge’s ballot. That’s what it would be if it were me. “This is why you vote pro/con,” and then you give a couple of sentences on the Big Idea. Anything else is pointless; I mean, what else can you do at this late stage of the game?

And for me, given my limited experience, that about sums it up. I'm sure I'll have things to add as time goes by and I learn more, but at least this is a start.

See you at the coin flip.