Written by Elena (edited by Swarajit)
Introduction
With a challenging word of the day “MANTLE” from a visiting Grammarian, guests taking part in the Table Topics section, a relatively new member taking Best Speaker award for her No. 2 Speech and one member preparing to give the Best Man speech at his brother’s wedding, it was another busy meeting at The Clerk & Well pub.
Femi, the Club President, opened the meeting with great enthusiasm and encouraged the audience to get involved in the Toastmasters programme.
The Toastmaster of the evening was past club President Glen, who energised the meeting and revealed goals which participants would like to achieve in the next 4 years by the ‘Rio 2016’ Olympic Games. Glen was supported by Timekeeper Steven and Grammarian Stella, visiting from Northern Lights Speakers.
Prepared speeches
Christopher declared his prime motive in joining Bloomsbury Speakers had been to prepare for the most important speech of his life – the “Best Man Speech” for his little brother’s wedding, which would take place this weekend. (Members often find that Toastmasters is a good platform to practise and enhance speeches that they have to deliver elsewhere.) Chris shared several amusing anecdotes about his brother and their close relationship.
The second speaker was Marielle with her speech No. 2 entitled “The Day I Became a Professional Dancer” in which she told us the story of how she was cast in a music video having had no experience of dancing before. Marielle closed with the advice – Fake it ‘til you make it!
The next speaker, Ahmed, presented his No. 4 speech “An Overview of the Major Underground Station Upgrade Projects”. He familiarised the audience with the project of upgrading Victoria, Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road stations due to quite significantly increased passenger demand by 2018. Ahmed also pointed out the benefits and major challenges of this project and his belief that it would help London to remain the business capital of Europe.
The last speaker was Renars with an advanced speech whose goal was to deliver a talk within the format of a radio talk show. He presented himself as an entrepreneur and founder of “Smart Card Ltd.” and was ‘interviewed’ by the host of the show (fellow member Michael). In his interview Renars told us about the main idea of his business which is placing business cards in dispensers on walls at many different social places so that anyone could take them out.
Speech evaluations
Christopher’s Best Man speech was evaluated by Michael. He started by quoting the phrase which really drew his attention – “this speech is the most important of my life”. He also commended Christopher’s strong introduction, great humour and research but recommended adding some pauses into the speech to get the audience to think a bit more.
Evaluating Marielle’s professional dancer speech, Elena praised originality of the topic and a well-structured speech enhanced with natural body language and pace of delivery. She recommended speaking louder and projecting the voice to cope with challenging noise from the street.
Carrie gave the evaluation of Ahmed’s speech on the Underground upgrade project. She commended Ahmed’s passion about this topic which came across in his body language. However Carrie would have liked to have heard some personal stories.
Ratan evaluated Renars’s radio talk show. The objective of the speech was to prepare for questions you might be asked. Ratan gave his evaluation in his humorous, thorough style and commended the fact that Renars appeared as a very confident speaker with a commanding voice and exceptional knowledge of the subject. Ratan would have liked to have heard Renars answer the questions related to printing of the business cards and their possible effect on environment.
Table Topics
Jo, inspired by “The big book of IF…” (which contains 50,000 questions starting with “If…”) used a sample of questions to help volunteers from the audience exercise their impromptu speaking skills. They were prompted to answer questions such as:
- If you could change one thing in the world right now, what it would be and why?
- If you could hold any athletic record, what it would be and why?
- If you could star any movie in the last fifty years, what would it be and why?
Awards
Closing the meeting, Femi reminded everyone that the Humorous Speech & Table Topics contests will take place on Monday, 10th September at our usual venue, The Clerk & Well, and gave out the awards based on the votes cast during the evening.
The Best Evaluator award was given to Ratan, a Toastmaster for over five years, for evaluating Renars’s advanced speech. The Best Table Topics Speaker award went to relatively new member Saija for her Table Topic about wanting to achieve the world record in synchronised swimming, and the highly-prized Best Speaker award went to Marielle for her professional free-style dancing speech.
The President’s discretional award went to Glen for his brilliant performance in the Toastmaster role.
Next meeting
Our next meeting is on Monday, 20th August 2012, upstairs at The Clerk and Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5BX.
