Written by Elena.

Introduction

With a brand new member giving her Ice Breaker speech, the visiting General Evaluator taking the Best Table Topic award and everyone benefiting from insightful speech evaluations, it was another great meeting.

The Toastmaster was Kaveh (from our sister club Holborn Speakers) who hosted the meeting under the theme: “What would you do if money was not an object” He was supported by Grammarian Henry and Timekeeper Saija who gave short introductions to their roles.

Prepared speeches

The first speaker of the evening, Bronia, gave her Ice Breaker speech entitled “Human Rights Campaigning”. Born in France, she told us about her childhood memories relating to her grandmother, who told great stories about the Second World War. Bronia shared that she had joined Toastmasters to practise public speaking for a human rights campaign project.

Next speaker Steven presented No. 2 speech entitled “The Joker in the Pack” in which he discussed the role of jokers throughout history and what we can learn from them. From one point of view a Joker is a man who is a famous comic. Shakespeare’s “King Lear” describes a fool boy who advised powerful people but whose death was consequently very probable. At the conclusion of the speech Steven encouraged the audience to be a bit of Joker themselves and to give honest recommendations with humour or love.

In No. 3 speech entitled “The Bliss of Ignorance” Christopher told the audience about his journey from ignorance (when he was a lot happier) to enlightenment – from arrogance to gaining more social responsibility. Christopher confessed he did not have a master plan to change Britain’s current poverty statistics, but he was very passionate about being part of the change, realising how fortunate he was compared to others.

The last speaker, who stepped in last minute, was Janet with her speech No. 5 entitled “The Future of Work”. While others seemed to think that the future of work being more creative, she felt that work needed to be more human. Every company should have: a pair of eyes to see and encourage talents, ears which would be able to hear good ideas and valuable feedback, and a mouth which would speak wisely. Janet concluded the speech with the phrase: “The future of work does not exist, the future of work is now!”.

Speech evaluations

Evaluating the Ice Breaker speech Michael commended Bronia’s good presentation and great storytelling skills, her good opening and conclusion. He recommended that she concentrate more on the main details and to avoid distracting descriptions.

Jason evaluated Steven’s Jokers speech. He reminded us of the main objective of the No. 2 speech – to organise your speech. Jason liked the beginning when Steven had discussed duality of the Joker, his great use of free-flowing humour and his very engaging smile. Jason would have liked to have seen more clear points in the speech.

Joe evaluated Christopher’s No. 3 speech. He praised Christopher’s enthusiasm and jokes at the beginning of the speech which were very captivated, very good structure of the speech,visual metaphor descriptions and a call to action. However, he noticed that the lectern had created a barrier which prevented full engagement.

Glen gave a thorough evaluation of Janet’s very creative speech. He complimented her on very natural body language which helped emphasise the points and reinforce the speech. He also liked the brilliant metaphor of making a company more human by giving it human attributes like a pair of eyes, a mouth, etc. In Glen’s opinion the speech could have benefited from a clearer transition from introduction to main body.

Table Topics

Topics Master of the evening was Swarajit who took on the role of potential employer and interviewed topics participants by asking them the following questions:

• You are being interviewed for the job of your dreams – why should we hire you?
• What is more important: status or salary?
• What is the worst job you ever had?
• Are women or men better bosses?
• What is your biggest weakness?

Awards

Closing the meeting the club President Femi gave out the awards based on the votes cast during the evening and one special President’s award.

The Best Table Topics Speaker award went to General Evaluator David (like Kaveh, also a member of Holborn Speakers).

The Best Evaluator award was given to Joe for his evaluation of Christopher’s Enlightenment speech.

The Best Speaker award went to Janet for her brilliant “Future of Work” speech.

The President’s discretional award went to Swarajit for his job on filling in the evening’s agenda and last minute stepping in as Topics Master.

Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest

Bloomsbury Speakers is hosting the Area 34 final of these contests on Monday, 15th October, 2012. Please come along to support Glen and David who are representing Bloomsbury against other local clubs. Venue and start time are the same as our regular meetings below.

Next meeting

Our next regular meeting is on Monday, 22^nd October 2012, upstairs at The Clerk and Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5BX. Arrive from 6.30pm for a 6.45pm start.

Extra meeting

We’ve had a lot of new members since we re-opened our membership and to help people get going on their speeches and other roles we’ve added a new meeting – Monday, 5th November, 2012, in the normal place at the normal time.

Book your roles in ClubPlan now!

Hello and welcome to the October newsletter!

This month we have important updates on club area contests including how you can support our winners – Glen who won the Humorous Speech Contest and David who took the Table Topics Award – and I want to promote some workshop news.

But first, with membership having re-opened at the end of September, I want to welcome five brand new members: Alex, Bronia, Ed, Eugenia, Michael and Paul. We are delighted to have you in the fold and I’m particularly excited to see some of you already on this month’s agenda – I’m referring here to Bronia who is giving her ice-breaker speech this coming Monday, and Eugenia who will be giving on hers on the 22nd.

I also want to recognize Janet’s exploits at the TEDx Future of Work speech contest which took place at The London Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday 26th September. Janet delivered a three minute speech against a fairly tough field of ten other contestants and although she wasn’t one of the two winners, she was one of the two “highly commended” speakers who were asked to act as reserve speakers. Well done Janet!

(Remember, if you’re in a hurry, you can scroll to the very end of the newsletter to get a list of the key things you need to know!)

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What’s happened since the last newsletter?

We had two fascinating meetings in September: the highly entertaining club-level round of the Humorous Speech and the Table Topics contests and a regular club meeting which was exciting in its own right.

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What’s planned for October?

October is brimming with four meetings – on the 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th.

This is because beyond our two regular meetings Bloomsbury Speakers will also be hosting the area-level round of the Humorous Speech and the Table Topics contests!  We will also be hosting an Evaluation Workshop meeting.

Regular Meeting – Monday 8th October

This is a regular meeting and while speaking slots are already booked up, you can put yourself down for a table topics slot.

Tip: Experienced functionaries to watch are: David Jones our General Evaluator from Holborn Speakers who was the winner of London Toastmasters Division B Table Topics Contest last year; Kaveh Pourvand, our guest Toastmaster for the meeting, also from Holborn and has already achieved his Competent Communication Award; and our own David Gwyer, an Advanced Toastmaster and winner of our own Table Topics contest last month.

Area Contest Meeting – Monday 15th October

This second meeting is not a regular meeting; instead it’s our Humorous Speech and Table Topics Area Contest night. This is when the winners of the club contests compete to decide who will represent our area at the Division level. In case you are not aware, there are four charter clubs in our area: Bloomsbury Speakers, Holborn Speakers (our sister club), Tube Talk and Law Speak. So this contest will, technically, be among four contestants in for contest.

The contest promises to be highly entertaining and enlightening, don’t miss it!. If anything, please come along to support Glen (for the Humorous Speech contest) and David (for the Table Topics) who will be representing us. Finally, if you would like to perform a functionary role at the meeting, please drop me a message at president@bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk and I’ll give you more details.  

Regular Meeting – Monday 22nd October

This is a standard regular meeting which is also already full in terms of speeches but you can still put yourself down on the agenda either as an evaluator or as a table topics participant.

Tip: If you want to see exemplary Toastmaster role in action, then make sure you watch how Henry Playfoot, who will be our Toastmaster, runs the meeting. Glen is another person to watch as he gives his evaluation.

Evaluations Workshop Meeting – Monday 29^th October

This is an enlightening, energetic and interactive presentation that is certain to improve the standard of YOUR evaluations.

The session will be run by Freddie Daniells, the present UK and Ireland Toastmasters International District Governor. If you’ve been to one of his Evaluation sessions before, you’ll know how good it is, so you’ll want to go again! If not, well, you have a treat in store!

More about the details of the workshop itself shortly, but if you would like to attend please email me at president@bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk so we can prepare for numbers.

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What’s on the horizon?

We’ve got two meetings in November – on the 12th and 26th.

• Monday 12th November 2012 – Regular Meeting – Speech-wise, this first meeting is already booked up. However, there’s one ice-breaker slot for new joiners, one Evaluator slot and three table topics slots up for grabs. Finally, competent communicator achievers to watch out for are Glen (our Toastmaster for the night) and Kate (who will be performing an evaluator role).

• Monday 26th November 2012 – Regular meeting – There are plenty of roles still to be filled in this meeting including the Toastmaster, Timekeeper, three Evaluator slots, Topics Evaluator, etc. Don’t delay; book your slot now before they are gone! I recommend watching out for Hari who will be delivering an advanced speech on the night.

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Want to improve your evaluations skills? Then Freddie Daniells’ Exceptional Evaluations Workshop is for you

Arguably the most important role within a Toastmasters meeting is the role of the evaluator. By encouraging and motivating the speaker we can pass on the tips they need to improve their speaking next time. However, it is also one of the most difficult roles to get right.

• Do you find it challenging to identify the key issues you need to comment on?
• Do you struggle to finish within time?
• Do you find it difficult if the speaker is more advanced than you are?
• Or do you simply want to find that extra polish that will help you in future contests?

No matter your level, this workshop is for you!

On Monday October 29th, Freddie Daniells will bring his highly interactive Exceptional Evaluations workshop to Bloomsbury Speakers. And by the end of the session, you will be able to:

1. Pick the best content to include in your evaluations
2. Structure your evaluations more effectively
3. Make your points so that both the speaker and the audience get maximum benefit

Freddie Daniells is a member of Holborn Speakers (where I first joined Toastmasters six years ago; actually he was the president at the time and one of the members who inspired me to join Holborn Speakers) and Excalibur Speakers, London’s advanced Toastmasters Club. He is the present Toastmasters International District Governor for Great Britain and Ireland. Professionally, he coaches senior executives and professionals on how to improve their most critical presentations and public speeches.

He strongly believes that giving feedback is one of the most important life skills that you can learn and has embarked on a one man mission to raise the quality of evaluations across the country!

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That’s all.

See you in a meeting very soon!

Femi Asaolu
President
Bloomsbury Speakers

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Key facts – just the stuff you really need to know

• Our next regular meetings are on Monday 8th October and Monday 22nd October.  There are still evaluator roles and Table Topics slots to fill at these meetings.)
• Bloomsbury Speakers is hosting the Area Contest on Monday 15th October –  best of luck to Glen and David who are representing us in the Honorourous Speech contest and the Table Topics Contest respectively. Let’s support them by attending and come along to enjoy the fun!
• Freddie Daniells, the UK and Ireland District Governor, is bringing his Evaluation Workshop to Bloomsbury Speakers on Monday 29th October.   If you would like to come please email me so we can prepare for numbers – president@bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk
• Our meetings in November are on the 12th and the 26th.

Written by Elena.

Introduction

With a guest (visiting from London Athenians club in Hammersmith) taking the Best Topics speaker award and a regular member winning best speaker for a speech about the mystery surrounding Shakespeare’s life, it was another great meeting.

The evening was hosted by past club Secretary and experienced member Kate. Having greeted everyone upon arrival, she went through the evening’s agenda under the theme “The Future of Work”. Grammarian Wayne and Timekeeper Carrie provided functionary support by overseeing good use of language and time management respectively.

Prepared speeches

The first speaker Marco spoke passionately about his subject – Politics in Italy – in a No. 2 speech entitled “Politics or Antipolitics”. He described the background, current political situation in Italy and attempted to solve the dilemma whether future government of Italy should be political or technical. In the conclusion of the speech he stated – it does not have to be as it is!

Ahmed gave his No. 5 speech “Soul/Funk Music – Yesterday and Today”. He explained that soul music comes from America and Ray Charles had been a pioneer in this genre of music during the 1950s. It was also very popular in the 1960s when Ahmed first learned about soul music from his uncle and he has kept passion for this kind of music since then.

Jo presented a well-researched speech No. 7 entitled “Good Will Hunting” about a “mystery” writer – William Shakespeare. She revealed that there are no genuine portraits of Shakespeare or even a written description of what he had looked like. Also, signatures show six different spellings of his name, there is no diary or letters to find out more about his life, and no record (except one) of him speaking his own voice. She also argued that Shakespeare’s language had been very innovative as he had invented 2000 words that we still use.

Joe persuaded the audience to change their attitude to work in his No. 9 speech entitled “This Means Work”. He provided three tips how to do that: to find meaning in your work, work hard (like competitors in the Paralympics) and follow your heart (like Richard Branson). At the end of the speech Joe invited the audience to work hard to help overcome the current economic recession.

Speech evaluations

Angela evaluated Marco’s speech about the Italian political system. She “approbated” (word of the day: approbation = praise) his very clear message, his use of a picture from a newspaper with jokes to enhance it, relaxed pace and natural body language. Angela noticed that speech could have been improved by working on voice projection.

Steven started his evaluation of Ahmed’s soul/funk music speech by stating what Ahmed had done well – equally distributed eye contact throughout the audience so everyone felt engaged, a chronologically organised speech making it easier to understand, and the use of hand gestures to add some comedy effect. In Steven’s opinion sometimes unnecessary movements distracted the audience from the main message.

Evaluating Jo’s Shakespeare speech Christopher pointed out the subject was very engaging and Jo had collected a lot of interesting facts including statistical data. Christopher particularly liked Jo’s description of Mr Fisher (her teacher) and the finale of the speech. The only recommendation was to use the stage a bit more.

The last evaluator Glen evaluated Joe’s persuasive speech about working hard. He commended Joe’s very supportive body language, great eye contact with the audience and the use of rhetorical devices. His main recommendation was to add a call to action at the end to make the speech more powerful.

Table Topics

The Topics Master for the evening was Elena, who prepared interesting and challenging questions for volunteers within the theme “Back to School”. She asked the audience to play the role of a class of 4 to 5 year olds who are “a bit naughty” and ask the teacher lots of questions. Each Table Topics speaker played the role of the teacher who was to teach the children on a given subject and deal with any disruptions and questions.

This evening we had science lessons about:

• British woodland habitants
• A comparison of wild cats and domestic cats
• How do humans differ from animals?
• Animals found in your back garden
• Animals with spots
• A day in the life of a monkey!

Awards

Closing the meeting the club President Femi gave out the awards based on the votes cast during the evening.

The Best Evaluator award was given to Glen for his evaluation of Joe’s speech. The Best Table Topics Speaker award went to the guest from London Athenians Speakers Mendora for her Wild vs Domestic Cats Table Topic, and the Best Speaker award went to the club Secretary Jo for her well-researched speech about Shakespeare.

The President’s discretional award went to Elena for the successful Table Topic section.

Next meeting

Our next meeting is on Monday, 8^th October 2012, upstairs at The Clerk and Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5BX.

It was standing room only at the 2012 Humorous Speech and Table Topics contest on Monday evening at The Clerk & Well.

Introduction

The contests were introduced by Carrie who set the scene and explained the format of the evening for the benefit of everyone present.

The first half would be the Humorous Speech section with seven contestants giving prepared humorous speeches and the second half would be the Table Topics section – with eight contestants giving impromptu responses to a mystery question.

Swarajit in his role as Contest Chair welcomed us to the “very special meeting” and explained some of the formalities surrounding contests. He also encouraged everyone to give the contestants as much support as possible with lots of applause.

Humorous Speeches

The first speaker was Christopher – fresh from success with his recent best man’s speech – with a speech entitled “The Real You – The Do’s and Don’t’s of Exposing Yourself”. He tackled the gnarly subject of how much of your true personality should you reveal to a new girlfriend or boyfriend and how soon?

The second speaker was Ratan with his “Father of the Bride Speech” from his daughter’s recent wedding. Ratan gave a touching and humorous account of his relationship with his new son-in-law and shared fond memories of his daughter growing up.

The third speaker was Renars with “Fitness Today – How Insane!” and he came dressed to impress in a striking costume – think 1980s fitness instructor! In a very animated and amusing speech he gave us his insight into the three types of exercise regime we might encounter: army-style conditioning classes, body combat or beach bootcamp.

Michael was our fourth speaker with a speech entitled “The Great Fire of Hillbury Road”. Michael shared the humorous story of the time his in-laws offered to help him build a large fire in his back garden. With a heady mix of contrasting personalities it’s perhaps not surprising that things got out of control!

David was the fifth speaker with his emotionally-charged and energetic speech “I’ve Lost My Security Pass”. David’s boss has asked him to do one simple thing – send an important email by 9.15am – but David is challenged by late trains, packed lifts and – of course – a lost security pass.

Joe was the sixth speaker with his speech “Bad Drivers”. Joe loves driving but he’s on a mission to identify and eliminate the 5% of drivers whose bad driving can make the roads a misery for everyone else. If you’re a middle lane driver – watch out – Joe’s got you in his sights.

Glen was the seventh speaker with his speech “The Rise and Fall of a Bokashi Master”. Glen revealed himself as a fanatical recycler and described his attempts to recycle his leftover food with Bokashi – a Japanese-style of home composting.

Tables Topics

Opening the second half of the meeting, Swarajit shared a personal story where his experience with Table Topics at Toastmasters had paid off in the real world. That day he’d attended the London 2012 Parade and had been interviewed by a Sky News reporter.

He then introduced the Table Topics contest, where each contestant was required to give a 1-2 minutes response to the same question:

“In your opinion what is the greatest invention ever made, or yet to be made?”

Contestants were brought in the room one by one to speak, so that everyone had the same amount of time – just a few seconds – to think about their answer before speaking.

Each contestant tackled the topic in a distinct way:

• David felt that the world’s greatest invention would be different for everyone – for his daughter it’s hair tongs but for him it’s his Flymo
• Ratan believed that the greatest invention not yet invented is something to help control the butterflies he feels when speaking
• Joe felt the best invention was the whoopee cushion for its ability to take people back to their childhood – particularly when you put one under your boss’s chair
• For Chris the greatest invention was the Tazer gun for its ability to stop the bad guys without causing permanent harm. In fact he felt that they should be made available to the general public!
• Renars thought that the railway was the greatest invention with its ability to transport goods more easily and promote tourism
• Glen decided the greatest invention would have to enrich people’s lives, be available to everyone and make us happy and came to the conclusion that the answer was Guinness.
• In Paula’s view the greatest invention ever was the juicer. Who needs cows, pigs or chickens when you can turn raw fruit and vegetables into nutritious liquid food?
• Jo felt that best invention would be a device which could freeze time so she could come up with the perfect answer with the help of Google and a glass of red wine

The Results

When all the contestants had spoken, club president Femi took the opportunity to thank all of the judges and those others who had helped to make the contest happen. This also gave the Chief Judge Jakub time to compile and double-check the results!

On returning to the room Jakub said he felt he had the best job – because he got to know the results before anyone else!

With “drumrolls” provided by the audience, Jakub announced the winners of the Table Topics contest: David was first, Ratan was second and Paula came third.

He then announced the winners of the Humorous Speech contest: Glen came first, David was second and Renars was third.

This year the top two places will go on to compete at Area level, so Glen and David will go on to represent the club for the Humorous Speech contest and David and Ratan for the Table Topics contest.

Next meeting

Our next meeting is back to the regular format and is at the normal venue: 6.30pm upstairs at The Clerk & Well, 156 Clerkenwell Road, EC1R 5DU.