Written by Svetlana
Introduction
Bloomsbury Speakers Club hosted its regular meeting on Monday 30th March 2015 with an enthusiastic opening from President Jo.
Prepared Speeches
After the Introduction, Jo handed the meeting over to the Toastmaster of the Evening, Peter L., who introduced the theme of the day jokes and pranks we like or we are good at in view of the upcoming 1 April Fool’s Day .
Femi introduced the functionaries of the day: Sarah the Timekeeper and Tracey, the Grammarian, introduced the word of the day “confounded”; she encouraged the use of rhetorical devices and reduce the amount of filler words.
There were four prepared speeches on the agenda. The first speaker was Conor who delivered a quite entertaining and informative No. 1 Icebreaker Speech, entitled “It’s Easy, Right?” devoted to his mixed experiences of public speaking, which he finalised encouraging us to open up topics discouraged from Toastmasters, such as politics, religion and sex.
Emma delivered her No.3 speech entitled “Women in Technology” – started off with a quiz to check our knowledge of famous names just to show us how biased we are as we could hardly name any women in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Emma organised her speech as past: Ada Lovelace, first computer programmer, Daphne Oram, creator of electronic sounds; present – Lauren Melanie, lead engineer of iPhone, Jess Lee, Google Maps creator; and future of technology – Gloria, the 8 year old London STEM school student, the code cracker. Emma expressed her wish that the future will not be about gender, but about people in technology.
Flavia gave her International Contest speech entitled “The Script” in which she related a dramatic personal story of a relationship where her own faith and support from close friends and family brought her to the idea that if the script of your life is not working for you change it rather than breaking yourself.
We had warmly hosted guest introductions from Michelle and well-balanced and well-structured thorough evaluations from Egor, Axel, and Bronia.
Table topics
The table topics session was conducted by Alefiyah, who offered the impromptu speakers a variety of questions.
“In life you often come across revelations, or epiphanies, which change our course of life. Which epiphany would you rather be?” went to Swarajit, who chose to be Darwin’s Theory.
“If you were a television what would your day be like?” went to Milo, who assumed the role quite easily and described several different highlights of being a TV set in a hotel or office foyer, at old persons’ home, at average family home, and gave us more than one chance to have a hearty laugh.
“If you were a house what kind of house would you like to be?” went to Olga who among so many choices chose to be a house for positive and caring people.
“If you were a celebrity what would you be famous for and why?” went to Sean, who said he would be David Beckham, because he, as an amateur football player is kicked all the time whether he is playing well or not. So, it would be good to enjoy fame and money while having that.
“If you were a political party what would be your philosophy?” went to Helen who said all current parties don’t provide what they are promising and she would be a party, which would promise anything voters want to vote for just to be elected.
“If you were car what kind of car would you be?” went to Axel who being originally from Sweden, would be a stylish car of Ferrari or Porsche or Aston Martin provided he gets his driving licence later this year.
Carrie gave an impressively thorough and informative evaluation for each of the topics speakers, which was well articulated and with good humour and language throughout.
Grammarian Tracey’s report was accepted with great attention as she evaluated speakers from the point of view of English language usage.
Florian provided an excellent and upbeat general evaluation of the evening providing recommendations to all functionaries of the evening and evaluators who were not evaluated.
Awards
Icebreaker ribbon has handed to Conor; best speaker award was handed to Flavia; best evaluator award went to Carrie; and best impromptu speech award went to Milo!
Next meeting
Our next regular meeting is on Monday, 13th of April upstairs at The Clerk and Well, 156 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm.
