Written by Svetlana
Introduction
Our President Swarajit opened the meeting by giving a concise description of what Toastmasters is about and how it can help build confidence in public speaking and leadership skills. He went on to speak about Bloomsbury Speakers itself and its executive committee, which includes, among others, the Vice President Education Jo, Vice President Public Relations Rufina and the club’s Treasurer Ahmed and is now planning for its succession in June.
After that, Swarajit introduced the evening’s Toastmaster Ratan who has been with Bloomsbury Speakers since its creation.
Ratan gave a brief overview of the Toastmasters competent communication programme before running through the agenda for the meeting. His theme of the day was “Why I joined Toastmasters” which he’d put as a question to all the evening’s participants. His own reason for joining Toastmasters was to gain confidence with public speaking, and it had also helped him a lot in his professional and social life.
Ratan then introduced the functionaries of the meeting who would assist him that evening:
- Svetlana, the Timekeeper [she said she was at the start of a new career in London and polishing her public speech skills and her goal is to balance the fear and excitement of her new life.]. She explained the format of the meeting agenda and the use of the “traffic lights” to signal timings to the speakers, and that one of the skills to be practiced in speech training was that of expressing a thought within a specific time.
- Kate, the Harkmaster [her reason for joining Toastmasters was to improve her confidence and speaking in groups]. Kate explained her role and encouraged the audience to listen to the speakers carefully as she would check their attention and memory in a quiz at the end and reward the correct answers with chocolate incentives!
Prepared speeches
With an Icebreaker speech entitled “Chance and Destiny: A Little Case Study” Egor [who wants to become a better all-round communicator and story teller;] introduced himself to the club. We all feel a need to be in control of our lives, but it is mostly chance that changes and shapes the human destiny, Egor explained. Many people born in the former Soviet Union experienced unfathomable changes in their life situations. Others had encounters that affected their private lives in unexpected ways. Egor shared his story of how he ended up in the UK pretty much by accident. “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about you plans” – pretty much sums up his dense and personal speech.
The second speaker, Tracey, used her No. 2 speech “The Introvert Advantage” to share with the audience the main message of the topic: that introversion can be beneficial. She cited some interesting research which showed that introverted people differ from so-called “extraverts” in that they recharge themselves from within, while extraverts do so from the people they communicate with. Introverts spend more time reflecting and are capable of high level of concentration, which enables them to have deeper understanding of things; they prefer one-to-one communication. These were features that underlined the difference between introverts and extraverts.
Our third speaker was Carrie who gave her No. 6 speech “An Alternative Option” and encouraged the audience to become entrepreneurs. After giving a short overview of the tremendous business successes of the McDonald brothers and KFC founder Colonel Sanders who started from scratch or even from initial failures, Carrie shared her 5 points of advice distilled from entrepreneurial experiences: 1. Have an idea; identify a need; find a solution; develop a credible product. 2. Create a product or service which you absolutely love. 3. Network, learn from people, use shortcuts. 4. Learn to love your failures because with each step you get closer to success. 5. Have faith. She concluded by sharing her business idea of creating personal development services similar to Toastmasters.
Our fourth speaker Henry gave his No. 10 speech entitled “Live Ferociously” starting off with a quote from Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. He shared a very emotional as well as intellectual and concise review of his own life so far, taking us through the milestones and turning points when he made decisions, such as leaving a comfortable and prestigious job at the BBC to become an entrepreneur. And now too, he was at the point where he had to decide which definition of success would be more suitable to his values and would give him a feeling of success and deep inner satisfaction. He shared that his set of attributes would include being incurably curious, interested in the world, courageous, open to new ideas and people, not to conforming to stereotypes, being passionate about what he did and possessing integrity. He demonstrated an exercise with a string, which revealed to everyone that, in fact, even a long life is much shorter than we assume and it is worth living ferociously, living it for real, without wasting a minute.
Evaluations
Bronia evaluated Egor’s Icebreaker speech and commended him for being brave and able to connect with the audience without fear of being vulnerable. Egor had a good balance of humour, eye-contact and movement on the stage. Her recommendation was to train to project his voice. Bronia praised Egor for a level of poetry, which was probably the influence of Russian literature, a skill which should be enhanced.
Damien evaluated Tracey’s No. 2 speech, pointing out that it was convincing, had a good strategy and effective use of questions, which helped her organise her speech. She managed to link the main messages of the speech to herself, which made her speech very clear and relatable to the audience. As a recommendation, Damien advised to use cards instead of notes and to concentrate on deeper breathing to cope with nervousness. Tracey had a clear stable voice, good eye contact and confidence.
Peter evaluated Carrie’s No. 6 speech with a number of commendations, such as her presence, poise and strength of voice. In fact, she made her audience listen to her, which was a great skill in itself. Her speech had structure, the body of the speech contained instructions and reflections on what she wanted to do and her voice changed. The instructional part of her speech was clear with the right pitch and good articulation and, overall, Peter felt the speech was inspiring and he wished her good luck with her aspirations.
Swarajit evaluated Henry’s No. 10 speech, which was a milestone in competent communication programme. Henry exuded confidence from start as he opened his speech with a quote from Socrates and launched into several personal example. The trick with a string was a good use of visual aid in getting his message across. His arm gestures were very effective too. The only recommendation concerned Henry’s stage position as he was too rooted in one place while occasionally shifting his weight between his legs. He could have probably done better if he either had a more solid pose or walked around the stage. The interaction with the audience was very good.
Table Topics
The table topics (impromptu speeches) section was chaired by Ahmed who explained the “rules of the game” as being able to think on your feet and produce a speech with a beginning, middle and end. He asked the table topic speakers various questions, which they never heard before.
The first question went to guest Peter: which role would he choose and why if he were to auditioned for an acting role? Peter said he would choose Superman, because it would hopefully help him acquire some of his skills and make his life more efficient and effective and more super.
David answered the question “what was the single funniest scene in the films you have seen?” Although all comedy films escaped his mind in the beginning, he resorted to the audience for ideas and nonetheless managed to entertain everybody.
James discussed the question, “How would you convince the government to give more money to the film industry?” He said it was difficult to convince governments to give money for anything, although films are worth funding. The example of that is French film industry, which is funded by the government. French films are known everywhere and possess the unique flavour and keep the idea of French-ness while the only English film funded by the government is “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. We need more films, which could deliver the idea of Englishness to the world much better than the image of Hugh Grant drinking tea, James concluded.
Rory had the question, “Why are X Factor and The Voice bad for the music industry?” Rory said that X Factor was a horrendous charade and not much about music anyway. The Voice, in his opinion, was a more interesting concept as contestants are judged by the voice and not appearances.
Nate had to answer the question “Which film villain is the worst ever?” he managed to mention quite a few of them off the cuff. Then, he asked his own question, “Why is being a villain such a bad thing?” He answered that maybe to be a villain is a good thing as the villain is integral to any story – and if the villain is not very good then the film or the plot is not that good either. Thus, the worst villain is not bad at all!
Robert’s topic was “worst film you’ve ever seen”. His answer was it was a film which he had to watch together with his little sister, who loved fairy tales, while he, in contrast, loved horror films. That particular film, although it had a dragon in it, was still the worst film he had watched in a decade.
Tracey’s question was about “music on CDs vs MP3”. She said MP3 music was much handier to deal with, but she was sorry for the authors who were losing money because free or very cheap downloading was available and people were not buying CDs these days as they used to in the past.
Jo evaluated the topics session by commending all who took part for rising to the challenge, being very natural, delivering with good energy and humour with the general recommendations to use more body language and use the stage more.
Awards
After Harkmaster Kate had done a quick quiz with chocolate rewards, Swarajit brought the meeting to a close by handing out the awards:
- The president’s award went to Svetlana as the evening’s Timekeeper and report writer
- Best evaluator went to Jo
- Best table topic went to Nate
- Best speaker went to Henry
Next meeting
Our next regular meeting will be held on Monday, 14th April upstairs at The Clerk & Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm.
This Friday, 4th April (7pm onwards) our member Janet will be competing in the Division L International Speech contest final at the City Temple Conference Centre, Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2DE. Please go along and show your support!
