Written by Elena (edited by Swarajit)
Introduction
The meeting was opened by Club President Glen who welcomed new and returning guests as well as regular ones and introduced new club members who joined us since the last meeting: Marco, Mike, Jason, Chris, Angela and Renars.
The Toastmaster of the meeting was returning member of the club Craig who guided the audience through the agenda. He was assisted by the Grammarian Carrie and Timekeeper Nimit who were performing their roles for the first time.
Prepared speeches
The Prepared Speeches section helps you practise your delivery, body language, vocal variety and use of rhetorical devices in the frame of Toastmasters’ comprehensive programme of speech projects on any theme you would like.
The first speaker was Paula with her speech No. 2 (the main purpose of which is to organise your speech) entitled “Lights, Camera, Action”. She shared with us her experience of how she had to make a video ‘infomercial’, how she prepared for this and how the actual filming turned out to be extremely different compared to her expectations. At the end of the speech Paula encouraged the audience to think long, think hard and always prepare when asked to perform.
The second speaker was Hari, who presented his No. 9 speech entitled “Climeat Change”. The aim of the No. 9 speech is to persuade with power and Hari argued that the biggest contribution to climate change is from industrialised farming and agriculture for animal-based products. Hari attempted to persuade the audience to avoid eating as much meat as we do, at least one day a week.
Relatively new member Renars gave his advanced speech No. 1 (focused on persuading people to buy something) entitled “Hello, My Name is Renars“. He tried to sell himself to the audience as a product and gave six tips on what it takes to be a salesperson: become genuinely interested in a person’s argument, smile, know the person’s name, be a good listener, target personal interests and let the other person feel important.
The fourth speaker this evening was Femi, who presented his advanced speech No. 5 (from the Speaking to Inform manual) entitled “Negative Campaigning Gone Too Far”. An election-related article from “Evening Standard” inspired Femi’s speech about the negative personal campaigning between the two main candidates for Mayor of London. Femi explained that this type of campaigning was counter-productive as it diverted attention away from listening to the real issues and could even discouraged some from getting involved in the voting process.
Speech evaluations
The second part of the meeting started with evaluations of the prepared speeches. Speech evaluation skills are not limited to the Toastmasters programme –you can evaluate a co-worker’s presentation, give feedback to the leader of the volunteer group in your neighbourhood or provide critique to a client you are coaching – however practising at Bloomsbury Speakers is one way of improving these skills in a safe and friendly environment.
Swarajit gave an evaluation of Paula’s speech. He commended Paula’s very well delivered speech, her enthusiasm and engaging smile, vocal variety and the use of natural body language as well as good structuring of the content. Swarajit gave only one small recommendation regarding Paula’s hand gestures, which were slightly repetitive.
Jason evaluated Hari’s No. 9 speech. He commended Hari for the sincerity of his speech and said that he had totally believed in Hari’s idea, so the objectives of the speech had definitely been met. Jason felt that Hari was very credible with his voice, poise and stance; they all were in congruence. Hari supported his speech using well prepared pictures and facts, but in Jason’s opinion there was a little too much information that was difficult to remember.
Henry evaluated Renars’s advanced speech. He commended Renars’s very warm, relaxed and engaging style that every salesperson needs. He also noted how Renars had very confidently told us about sales techniques using references to demonstrate that he knew what he was talking about. Henry would have liked to have heard a bit more about Renars’s personal feelings in the speech.
Adam gave an evaluation of Femi’s advanced speech. Adam commented that Femi had started with a strong quote and carried on with passion. In terms of structure, the speech was very powerful and well set up and Femi’s voice and body language were very effective but sometimes distracted from the main message.
Table Topics
The Table Topics part of the meeting was opened by Topics Master of the evening, Janet, who performed this role for the first time. She suggested the theme: If you meet a stranger what do you want to know? The questions were about different areas of life:
The first question – If you could teach your child in one lesson what lesson would that be? – was given to recent member Saija.
Another new member Marco answered the succinct question “Mac or PC?”
The question “If you could attend your own funeral what you would like to hear your best friend say about you?” was given to a returning guest Jonathan.
The fourth question, given to another returning guest David, was “If you could be seven years old again, what would you like to be when you grow up?”
Finally, new member Chris tackled the question “What is the worst question I could possibly ask you?”
All participants coped very well with the challenging questions and were evaluated by the evening’s Table Topics evaluator Ratan. He encouraged speakers to use maximum available timeslot of 2 minutes for speaking and commended the technique of repeating the question (which gives the speaker a chance to think a bit more), using humour and expanding the answer.
Next our first-time Grammarian Carrie stepped up to give her report on the effective use of language (or otherwise!) during the meeting. She was very pleased with the number of people who had managed to include the word of the day – “discombobulated” – in their speeches and evaluations, and pointed out effective use of rhetorical devices such as anaphora.
The General Evaluator for this evening was Alan, a frequent guest from our sister-club Holborn Speakers, who evaluated all the meeting participants that were yet to be evaluated. He provided very detailed evaluation and the most useful recommendation for evaluators was to try using small notes and to not turn more than ninety degrees away from the audience when using the lectern.
Awards
Closing the meeting, Glen gave out the awards based on the votes cast during the evening and one President’s discretional award.
Henry acquired another Best Evaluator award – his second in consecutive meetings – for his fantastic evaluation of Renars’s advanced speech. The Best Table Topics speaker award went to returning guest David for his great Child’s Dream table topic, and the highly coveted Best Speaker award went to VP of Education Femi for his brilliantly delivered speech. The President’s discretional award went to Carrie for successfully performing the Grammarian role.
Next meeting
Our next meeting is on Monday 14th May 2012, upstairs at The Clerk and Well Pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5BX.
P.S. What do you think of the images in this meeting report? They were made using Wordle, a tool for generating “word clouds” based on text – in our case sections from the report. Let us know what you think!
