By Elena Fanaberova
Introduction
Club President Glen Long opened the meeting by welcoming new guests and explaining what Toastmasters is all about and how it works. Inspired by a book he had recently read called “Poke The Box” by Seth Godin, he encouraged the audience to use Toastmasters meetings as their opportunity to try something different and see what happens. After introducing new members Neil Ward and Ann Connolly he handed over to the evening’s Toastmaster Dave Longley.
Dave took over and outlined the agenda, followed by Karan Daswani, this evening’s Timekeeper, who explained the timing aspects when delivering speeches, and then by Adam Horne, this evening’s Harkmaster, who encouraged the audience to listen to the speakers carefully.
Prepared Speeches
New member Neil Ward gave his Icebreaker speech entitled “Entrepreneurship – The Willingness To Be Different”, describing his early entrepreneurial attempts at the age of seven, earning (then losing!) a million pounds in his mid-twenties and then talking about his future business plans.
In a No. 7 speech “Circle Of Influence” (which is focussed on researching your topic thoroughly) Todd Wade talked about our comfort zone and why some people tended to expand it while others tended to stay within it. He gave some useful tips for coping with the fear that often prevents the latter from being the former.
In another No. 7 speech entitled “The Importance Of Chewing Your Food”, Kate Osborne educated us in how important it is to chew our food properly in order to be healthy, explaining in detail what affects digestion and how to improve it.
Speech evaluations
After the break, Toastmaster Dave introduced the first prepared speech evaluator, Swarajit Das, who evaluated Neil’s Icebreaker speech. Swarajit underlined the strong points of Neil’s presentation, namely that he was already very confident speaking in front of the audience, his speech was detailed with a good chronological structure and he rounded up nicely. Swarajit suggested more eye contact with the audience and would have like to have heard more information about when Neil was (temporarily!) a millionaire.
The next evaluator was Glen Long. Evaluating Todd’s speech Glen noted his confident tone, command of the stage and “well-measured” speech delivery, all of which made it very easy to listen to. As a recommendation he said would have liked to have also heard a personal story in connection with the subject of the speech.
The last evaluator, Jennifer Zou, evaluated Kate Osborne’s speech. Jennifer commended a good choice of the topic and noted that Kate must have carried out a lot of research while preparing her speech. She also commended Kate’s very good body language and recommended using diagrams and other visual materials for better illustration of the subject.
Table Topics
The last part of the meeting was a Table Topics session. Joe Lake stepped up to the stage in the role as Topicsmaster and invited the audience to practise valuable impromptu speaking skills with a fun topic he had selected.
He asked us to imagine a situation where we wake up in the morning in a foreign place and find ourselves to be a completely different person.
What would we do that day?
- First-time guest Andreas transformed himself into the Queen for one day.
- Terry woke up as David Cameron and thought how he could change the world.
- Guest Rupinder imagined himself as Kate Moss and spent one very active day shopping, meeting friends and partying.
- Guest Saija woke up as Bugs Bunny and had a carrot picnic with friends.
- Guest Jem woke up as David Beckham and enjoyed his family, children, friends and encouraged the audience to be creative in their own lives.
- Neil woke up on a lost desert island with Jeremy Clarkson and tried to make the best of it.
- Returning guest Amitoj woke up as Michael Winner and really got into the part.
Dave stepped up again – this time as Table Topics Evaluator – and gave very positive and useful recommendations to the participants and more general advice useful to all.
In his Harkmaster’s report Adam generously awarded good listeners with sweets for the right answers to his questions relating to the content of the evening.
General Evaluator Petra Jakubekova, the President of Riverside Communicators in Twickenham, said that she would recommend Bloomsbury Speakers to others as a very encouraging club and added that the meeting had started on time and praised Glen’s quick adaptation of the agenda in response to absences.
Awards
At the end of the meeting, president Glen gave out the awards based on votes from the audience. Neil was awarded his Icebreaker certificate for his brilliant first speech, the award for the best Table Topics Speaker was given to guest Saija, the award for the best Evaluator of the evening went to Jennifer, and the coveted best Speaker award went to Kate.
Next meeting
The next regular meeting is Monday 8th August 2011 – arrive from 6.30pm for a 6.45pm start.
Please note there is a change of venue due to refurbishments in the Rugby Tavern.
The new venue will be: Upstairs in The Lamb, 94 Lambs Conduit Street, London, WC1N 3LZ.
