By Elena Fanaberova. (Edited by Swarajit Das).
Introductions
The meeting was opened by the club’s Past President, and acting President for the evening, Nazia Soon. In her very welcoming introduction Nazia clearly explained, for the benefit of our guests, the organization of the worldwide Toastmasters family and how to become a competent speaker and leader by following the first two Toastmaster’s manuals.
Nazia then handed the meeting over to the evening’s Toastmaster and club secretary Kate Osborne, who encouraged an energetic meeting. Kate briefly explained the agenda before introducing the theme for the meeting – favourite leaders – and explained that she would be introducing each speaker and functionary with the answer they’d given beforehand. Kate revealed that her own favourite leader is London mayor Boris Johnson.
Kate then introduced the evening’s Timekeeper, Elena Fanaberova (whose favourite leader is Peter the Great), and Harkmaster Joe Lake.
Prepared speeches
This evening there were four prepared speeches from across the whole range of Toastmasters projects: one Ice Breaker speech, two No. 5 speeches (Your Body Speaks) and one Advanced Speech.
The first speaker was AG with her fascinating and professionally-delivered Ice Breaker speech. She told us that her greatest passion is travelling which is closely linked with her other interests such as human history and World War II, as well as cooking and tasting new food.
The next speaker was Hari Kalymnios, whose favourite leader is Winston Churchill. In his No. 5 speech “Gimme A Break!” Hari told us, in a very expressive way, a personal story about a terrible event on holiday in Austria when he broke his shoulder and had to go through a lengthy and painful recovery, which taught him that with hard work, discipline and help from others, one can cope with any challenge.
The third speaker was Joyanta Raksmith, whose favourite leader is the late Steve Jobs. In his No. 5 speech entitled “Greatest Product on Earth” Joyanta discussed specific features of some very popular technology products such as the iPad and Facebook, and yet tried to prove the point that the greatest product on earth is Coca Cola.
The last prepared speaker was Jennifer Zou with her Advanced Speech entitled “Is packaging important to you?”. Jennifer told us a very emotive but wise story about a young man who not only missed a desired gift from his father because it was packaged in a way that he didn’t expect, but even broke up his relationship with his father because of it.
Speech evaluations
After a short break, Kate opened the evaluations part of the meeting. The first evaluator was Femi Asaolu, evaluating AG’s maiden speech.
Femi reminded us that the objective of the Ice Breaker speech is to discover speaking skills that the speaker already has. He said he had heard a very well presented story and that AG already had an outstanding storytelling ability which he likened to reading a novel.
The next evaluator, Henry Playfoot, whose favourite leaders are Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, evaluated Hari’s speech. Henry commented that Hari demonstrated body language and eye contact that were both entirely congruent with his speech and achieved the objectives of the No. 5 speech. There was only one recommendation for Hari: to use more facial expressions.
The third evaluator, Todd Wade, whose favourite leader is also Steve Jobs, evaluated Joyanta’s speech about Coca Cola. He praised the precise, clever and persuasive arguments Joyanta used to back up his point of view but noticed that the introduction was a little bit longer than necessary and suggested speaking without notes.
The last evaluator, Nazia Soon, whose favourite leader is Richard Branson, evaluated Jennifer’s advanced speech. She said that Jennifer’s story had been very emotional and had moved everyone in the audience and so the main objective of this speech was achieved very well. Nazia recommended that Jennifer project her voice a bit more to make it easier for everyone in the audience to hear.
Table Topics
The ad hoc speeches part of the meeting was opened by Kate introducing the evening’s Topics Master, Hari Kalymnios, who opened by describing his own experience of having to make an impromptu speech at a wedding.
The first Table Topic speaker, Henry Playfoot, was given a topic called “A leader of Greece” and was required to convince the population of the country that it is necessary to undertake unpopular measures to recover from the debt crisis.
The second speaker, Simon – one of the evening’s guests – received the topic “A leader of an island” and had to convince one of its inhabitants to jump into a volcano to save the rest of the population.
The third speaker was another guest, John, who was tasked with picking any three leaders to invite to dinner and explain his reasons.
The last speaker, Layla (yet another guest!), was asked to predict who out of two leaders including Nelson Mandela would win in a street fight and why!
The Table Topics evaluator Swarajit Das commented that speakers had been given very difficult topics but used humour, good structure and effective tactics in their answers. He also gave some general recommendations about eye contact and stage position which were useful for all.
After Swarajit’s evaluations, Harkmaster Joe Lake tested the attendees’ listening skills by posing questions relating to what they had heard throughout the evening. As usual correct answers were rewarded with sweets!
Awards
After an insightful general evaluation by experienced speaker (and member of TubeTalk) Ola Aralepo, Nazia brought the meeting to a close by giving out the awards based on votes cast during the evening.
The Best Evaluator award went to Femi, the Best Table Topic speaker award went to guest Simon and the highly-coveted Best Speaker award to Jennifer. AG also received a certificate for successfully completing her Ice Breaker speech – an important landmark for any Toastmaster.
Next meeting
Our next meeting is on Monday 24th October 2011 at The Rugby Tavern.
The London Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest Finals (including four great educational workshops) are happening this Saturday 15th October.
Find out more and book tickets at:
