Written by Rufina
Bloomsbury Speakers hosted its International Speech and Evaluation Contest on 17th March 2014, with Glen acting as the Contest Chair.
Not only did Glen do a good job of explaining the formalities of the contest and encouraging the contestants, he also did fantastically well at keeping the whole meeting charged and exciting throughout.
International Speech Contest
Setting the pace with his speech entitled “I Have a Dream”, Michael wanted to share his dream of living positive lives with us.
He described his vision of exercising this positivity through the Toastmasters programme and of companies using Toastmasters as a platform to celebrate their employees, encourage them and build giants in their respective fields.
The second speaker, Swarajit, with his speech “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?” rhetorically asked, “is it because he doesn’t want to?” Is it because they’re less deserving or they don’t pray hard enough?
He went on to argue that humankind’s achievements have already surpassed those of any gods with science and so prayer and faith are redundant.
Kate, spoke on “The Adventures of Jeremy Fisher” her beloved childhood pet horse who was inherited from a neighbour.
Jeremy loved eating so much that nothing could stand in his way when it came to food. He was clever, cunning and very lovable, as shown by the fact that his memory still lives on.
The first part of the meeting ended on a bang note with Janet’s speech entitled “The Five Stages of Grief” where she attested that there is no ‘happily ever after’ as portrayed by Disney.
Instead, Janet used the Little Miss charaters to show the stages she went through having been dumped, starting from the go lucky Miss Happy to Miss Denial, Miss Guilty, Miss Angry, Miss Sad and Miss Hope who sees the hope of knowing herself.
Evaluation Contest
Helen, the mystery speaker with a speech entitled “Earworms”, asked the audience if they’ve ever had a tune stuck in their head and demonstrated with the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. An earworm is a catchy piece of music that continually cycles through a person’s mind repeatedly. Helen encouraged us to use earworms to our advantage by repeating positive ideas.
To evaluate Helen’s speech, the Evaluation contestants Janet, Rufina, Kate, Swarajit and Michael were brought in one after the other to give their analysis of what they liked about Helen’s speech as well as what they thought could be improved.
Results
When the judges’ ballots had been counted and checked, drum rolls were provided by the audience and, with suspense built up by the chief judge Rob from Clerkenwell Speakers, the results were announced.
In the Evaluation contest, the results were:
- 3rd place – Kate
- 2nd place – Janet
- 1st place – Swarajit
For the International Speech contest, the top two were:
- 2nd place – Swarajit
- 1st place – Janet
Next Round
Janet and Swarajit will now represent the club in the next round, so please go along and support them at the Area 34 finals from 6:30pm on Thursday, 27th March at Transport for London, 55 Broadway, SW1H 0BD (directly above St. James’s Park tube station). The event is in a corporate building, so please register with president@bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk if you would like to attend.
Our next regular meeting is this Monday, 24th March at The Clerk & Well pub.
