By Elena Fanaberova
Introduction
The meeting was opened by Club President Glen Long who explained, for the benefit of guests, that Bloomsbury Speakers is part of a huge Toastmaster’s family which has 250,000 members across the world, emphasizing that it is a “learning by doing” environment because practice is absolutely the best way to get better.
Then he told us the personal story of having his mood lifted one rainy morning by seeing a grown man racing down a big hill on his bicycle shouting “wheeeee!”. He then invited everyone in the room to stand and ride their own imaginary bike down a hill with the same enthusiasm. The aim of regular practice of public speaking, he suggested, was to turn self-consciousness and nervousness into the fun and exhilaration of freewheeling down a big hill. Allowing everyone to sit back down, Glen then handed the meeting over to the evening’s Toastmaster Alex Goldsbrough.
Alex announced changes in the agenda and outlined the structure of the meeting. After that he introduced his helpers for the evening, the Timekeeper Adam Horne and the Grammarian Stella Meadows, who gave us the Word of the Day – “girdle” – and invited as many people to use it as possible.
Prepared Speeches
Well known to the club for his entertaining Table Topics speeches, Terry Freedman kicked off the prepared speeches by giving his ice breaker speech entitled “How Did We Get There?”. Terry shared with us his experience of a train trip to Venice, where he smelt the Mediterranean herbs as the sea and land glided past at 60 miles per hour. He observed that people these days tend to try to get somewhere as quickly as possible and often miss many special moments of travelling.
In his No.2 speech “Social Networking” Joe Lake tackled the topic of social networking from different points of view and asked if it was taking over our lives. In his conclusion, Joe decided that it is a force for good when used to build positive relationships as long as people also get to talk face to face on a regular basis!
In another No. 2 speech entitled “Social Proof – Revealing Truths” Karan Daswani discovered through his research that we tend to be influenced a lot more by what people around us say or do than by any facts. Karan also told a personal story about his brother who would not swim without his “Mr Duck” inflatable toy until he saw another boy do it, despite his parents attempts to convince for 3 months without success.
In his No.4 speech “The Best Years Of Your Life” Swarajit Das used great humour to tell stories from his school days, likening his experiences to a campaign of war! We heard how he had confronted a girl who terrorized him about his weight with some verbal terror of his own, and later how he had bought a top-of-the-range mobile phone to impress fellow pupils – only to discover there was no reception at the school!
Before the break, new member Ann Connolly did a fantastically warm job of leading the guest introductions, inviting new visitors to explain what had brought them to the meeting.
Evaluations
After the break Toastmaster Alex welcomed us back for the second part of the meeting and introduced the first evaluator, Femi Asaolu, who evaluated Terry’s ice breaker speech.
First of all Femi noted that the main objective of the ice breaker is simply to speak in front of the audience and Terry had met this soon after joining the club over a year ago with his numerous Table Topics! The second objective is to discover skills that a speaker already has and Femi commented that Terry already has a very good style of delivery and on the content side his language is very descriptive.
The next evaluator, Guy Smith, evaluated Joe Lake’s speech about social networking. Guy said that the structure of the speech was very good with a clear introduction, making his arguments in the middle, and finishing with an effective conclusion. He commended the use of rhetorical questions and effective use of statistics. Guy’s only recommendation was to put positive and negative arguments into separate chunks to reduce frequent changes between positives and negatives, which is more difficult to follow.
The third evaluator was Dave Longley. Evaluating Karan’s speech, Dave commented that fundamental objective of the speech No.2 is to organise one’s speech and Karen had certainly achieved that with his good structure. Dave also noted that Karen’s speech was well delivered and researched. Dave simply suggested expanding the eye contact to include the edges of the audience – not just the centre of it.
The last evaluator, Glen Long, evaluated Swarajit’s speech. Glen commended the great comic premise in Swarajit’s speech, his effective structure, and his good use of tone and hand gestures. Among his recommendations were suggestions to use a slightly more upbeat tone to offset some of the darker elements for comic effect, change the tone and pace to signpost the jokes and have a stronger conclusion that returned to the main theme.
Table Topics
Standing in at short notice as Topicsmaster, new member Neil Ward introduced the theme of job interviews and invited volunteer impromptu speakers to tell us why they were the best person to fill a number of interesting vacancies:
- Adam said he would be ideal as the Head of European Space Agency because: he likes space, is the right build for an astronaut’s suit, and will get on well with all Europeans as he’s Australian!
- Will made a strong case as a future Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police: he has always been interested in law and order (though not necessarily sticking to it!), has a short enough criminal record to get the job and would bring a lot of passion as he really likes London.
- Ray, interviewing for the British Embassador to Iceland emphasised the value of having just six months experience in his current role (just enough apparently!), told us he knows more about finance than most Icelanders and has even been to Iceland recently!
- Terry staked his claim on the job of Lady Gaga’s Business Manager saying he will ensure that everyone loves this singer as much as he does!
- Karan, applying for job of Pelican Master General in Hyde Park explain how he admires these birds and how they fly, likes animals (he has had dogs, rabbits and other animals at home) and is good at organising things so the animals are well fed and taken care of.
- Guy, trying to get the job of Royal Advisor to the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge, told us they were the perfect couple, that he had been the first person in the queue the day they got married, and also revealed that he has walls at home dedicated to them individually and as a couple!
- Marty as a potential new CEO of Tesco said he had the right experience, having been CEO of Sainsburys for 3 years, would single-handedly revolutionize what people think about wine and would get employees who were happier and more ready to serve people.
Table Topics Evaluator Hari Kalymnios presented his evaluation of all seven impromptu speakers, doing a great job of pinpointing the strong sides of their speeches as well as indicating things that could have been better.
Grammarian Stella gave her report on the use of language in the meeting: the Word of the Day “girdle” was used in an appropriate context eight times, and she noted there were some great use of humour and colourful expressions, but she recommended that people watch their crutch words and phrases, such as “you know”, “ok”, and “erm”.
General Evaluator Jennifer Zou gave an evaluation for all those participants who had not yet been evaluated and this was followed by Glen as President bringing the meeting to a close with awards and announcements.
Awards and Announcements
Best Table Topics speech was awarded to Guy for his Royal Advisor application. Best Evaluator went to Dave for his evaluation of Karan’s speech. Best Speaker went to Karan for his speech about Social Proof. And the President’s discretionary award went to Neil for his first-time role as Topicsmaster.
Glen reminded attendees of the special Story Workshop being held on 5th September, and the club’s Humorous Speech and Table Topics contest on the 12th September.
The next meeting is Monday 22 August 2011 at The Lamb, 94 Lambs Conduit Street, London.
