Table Topics Workshop

Last night was Bloomsbury Speakers first ever Table Topics Workshop – an extra opportunity for members of the club to practice their impromptu speaking.

Table Topics are a regular fixture of normal Toastmasters meetings. Here’s how they work:

The table topics organiser (or Topicsmaster) introduces the session and then invites a series of volunteers to speak for 1-2 minutes on a particular topic, the exciting twist being that you only get given the topic at the very last second, as you are coming up to the front of the room.

At a regular meeting there will be a single table topics session giving 6-8 people the opportunity to speak, but last night’s session was designed to really ramp up our impromptu speaking skills and so the whole evening was completely dedicated to table topics. Everyone who attended got three chances to speak (which we worked out was the equivalent of three months worth of normal meetings!)

The topics and speeches were very varied and entertaining, and included:

• Craig arguing for a complete cycling ban in London (he really hates “the Boris bike”!)
• Fabrizio arguing that he should be Hollywood’s choice for the next big action hero
• Alex D outlining his plans to create new hybrid animals, such as the “zeraffe”
• Rekha explaining how she would deal with a critical boss (be afraid!)
• Henry apologising to a work colleague for inappropriate comments
• Alex G presenting his ideas for improving office morale amidst redundancies
• Glen making a case for compulsory hat wearing in the U.K.
• Kate explaining why we should all eat five (insects!) a day
• Nazia recounting her memories of the Great Fire of London
• Jeff attempting to rally support for National Nudity Day

The evening was tremendous fun (and also very funny!) and the informal feedback after the session was very positive – everyone seemed to feel they’d learnt loads in a short space of time.

We’re busy collating a list of top tips we learned from the session and will post them up here very soon.

But if you want to improve your impromptu speaking (and who doesn’t – you never know when you might be called upon to say something!) then we strongly recommend jumping into the very next table topics session you can. And, of course, Bloomsbury Speakers is a great place to give it a try!