Audiences are polite. The Cicero Speechwriting Awards judges aren’t.

The speaker seemed to like the speech. It seemed like it hit on all the key points. It seemed to go over well with the audience.

But the speechwriter entered the damn thing into the 2011 Cicero Speechwriting Awards, to find out for sure.

And did so by the Feb. 11 deadline, of course—in heartpounding hopes that the speech would be good enough that Vital Speeches editor David Murray would read an excerpt to several hundred fellow speechwriters at his closing keynote "jam session" at the 2011 Speechwriters and Executive Communicators Conference in Washington, May 8-9.