Meeting Report for 28 March 2011

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Acting president Ratan Lele opened the meeting with a report of the club’s recent successes in the area contest, with Raj Jain winning best speaker and progressing to the all-London final on April 9th! On the same evening, club member Glen Long also narrowly missed first place in the speech evaluation contest so a good evening for Bloomsbury all round.

And it was Glen, in his role as the evening’s Toastmaster, who took over the reins from Ratan. Glen gave an overview of the evening’s agenda and explained the basic format of Toastmasters meetings for the benefit of any new visitors.

Swarajit Das introduced the role of Timekeeper by way of an impressively scientific definition of time itself and gave an overview of the green, amber and red “traffic light” system that would be used to keep all participants on schedule.

Prepared speeches

The first speaker was Hari Kalymnios who, despite being a member for just one month, was already delivering his second speech! In a relaxed and humorous speech entitled “British Summer Time”, Hari gave us his top three reasons for loving the onset of the warmer months signalled by the clocks going forward.

Next up was Alex Goldsbrough, giving his No. 5 speech. The fifth speech in the Toastmaster’s speech manual focusses on effective use of body language and hand gestures and in “The Annoyed Cyclist” Alex gave us – in a very funny and animated style – a glimpse into the frustrations of being a keen cyclist in London.

The third and final speech of the evening – also a No. 5 and also bike-themed – was from club secretary Kate Osborne who told, in surprisingly good-humoured fashion, the saga of her long-running struggle to keep her bike (well, a series of bikes) out of the hands of London’s bicycle thieves. Her secret weapon? A tin of pink paint!

Speech evaluations

After the break, each of the three speakers received an evaluation from a Bloomsbury member.

Joyanta Raksmith gave a studied and well-considered evaluation of Hari’s No. 2 speech.

Todd Wade gave a robust evaluation of Alex’s No. 5 speech in his familiar confident and forthright style, challenging Alex to make sure the content of his speech did not play second fiddle to the physicality of the delivery.

And Fabrizio Palmucci gave a distinctive and glowing evaluation of Kate’s No. 5, using a recap of her objectives to demonstrate how well she’d fulfilled the goals of her speech.

Table topics – impromptu speaking

After the prepared speech evaluations, Henry Playfoot took over proceedings and introduced the table topics session, an opportunity for willing volunteers to practice the art of impromptu speaking.

Setting the bar high from the very beginning, Henry took his inspiration from Shakespeare and invited participants to speak for 1 – 2 minutes on classic quotes including:

  • “The course of true love never did run smooth”
  • “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players”
  • “Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once”

By the end of the session, eight people – members and guests alike – had taken part and all dealt impressively with Henry’s Bard-themed challenge.

Alex Donald then took on the role of table topics evaluator – no mean feat given the number of participants – and delivered a pithy mini-evaluation for each of the speakers, with many words of encouragement.

Finally, Douglas Williams – of Northern Lights Speakers in Camden – gave a detailed and insightful assessment of everyone that had not yet been evaluated, in his role as general evaluator. He commended the club on its “chilled out” and friendly atmosphere, but also provided specific and helpful recommendations for those who had taken on a role.

Wrapping up the meeting, Ratan Lele presented the awards for the evening – all based on votes from the audience. Best table topics speaker was given to James Hallinan – one of our newest members; best evaluator went to Fabrizio; and best speaker went to Kate. The president’s discretionary award went jointly to Ken, Simon, Imtiaz and Kunwar – the four guests who’d so bravely taken on Henry’s table topics challenge.

The next regular meeting is on Monday 11 April, but before then why not book yourself a place at the Division B International Speech and Evaluation Finals on Saturday 9th April to support Raj Jain?

Contest Report for 14 March 2011

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On Monday evening Bloomsbury Speakers held its very first international speech and evaluation contest, not bad going for a club that chartered less than a year ago!

Five club members battled it out for the best speaker title and eight contestants locked horns for the best evaluator award. The visiting judges – many of whom had come from far and wide – had their work cut out from the start and several remarked that the standard was exceptionally high for such a young club.

It was a great evening that really showcased Bloomsbury’s members, with Glen Long kicking off the contest with a thought provoking speech about receiving a hypothetical balance sheet of our good and bad deeds in life.

Next Raj Jain delivered a masterful performance in a speech about overcoming his stammer and his shyness in his youth.

Raj was followed by Ratan Lele who told us an emotional story about the influence his grandmother had on his life as a young boy.

Giving the fourth speech of the night, Femi Asaolu in his own uniquely engaging style brought his love of the Victoria Line to life with words, singing and even poetry!

Finally, Guy Smith – a very game last minute entrant to the contest – gave an amusing and ironic speech on the art of phone conversation, telling us why all of us – but particularly men! – need to reconnect with friends by cultivating the skills for quick and engaging phone calls.

After the break it was time for the evaluation contest and the mystery speaker (that all contestants would be required to assess) was revealed as Atul Patel.

Atul treated us to a masterful display of story telling skills with a speech entitled Manifesting My Dream. The was a wide range of experience levels amongst the eight evaluators – including one who was evaluating for the very first time – so very well done to all of them for stepping up to the challenge!
When all the judges’ votes had been counted, the results were announced.

Best speech went to Raj Jain, with second and third places going to Ratan Lele and Glen Long respectively. In the evaluation category, Glen came first, followed by Henry Playfoot and then Femi Asaolu.

Raj and Glen will go on to represent the club in the Area Finals on Thursday 24th March at London Business School.

Many thanks to the functionaries without whom we could not have run such a successful contest: contest chair Liz Hobbs and chief judge Ewan Wong (both from Tube Talk); the judges: Kedar Godbole of Trojan Speakers, Andreas Voniatis and Petra Jakubekova of Riverside Speakers, James Goddard and Graeme Conn (from Holborn Speakers) and Mike Young of Berkeley Square Speakers; our timekeepers Terry Freedman and Adam Horne; and finally our official counters Swarajit Das and Dave Longley.

Meeting Report for 28 February 2011

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In Bloomsbury’s backup venue – upstairs at The Lamb in Lamb’s Conduit Street – club president Nazia Soon opened the meeting by discussing the value of good leadership and urging members to take advantage of the opportunities within Toastmasters to improve their leadership skills.

Toastmaster for the evening Henry Playfoot talked about the role of vocal support and applause from the audience and how it generated energy that helped speakers give their best performance.

In his role as timekeeper Glen Long emphasized the importance of being able to deliver a message within a given amount of time – reminding us that even the best speech in the world will lose its impact if only half-delivered!

Prepared speeches

Henry introduced the first speech of the evening – an icebreaker speech from brand new member Hari Kalymnios, entitled “History, Anecdotes, Reflections – Interested?”. In his impressively confident first speech at the club, Hari gave us a potted history of his life with its recurring themes of fitness and exotic travel, and gave us a glimpse into his future with his ideas for starting a new business.

In a poignant number four speech entitled “Ski to Surf”, Alex Goldsborough spoke about his home town of Christchurch, New Zealand, which had so very recently been hit by the tragic earthquake reported widely in the news. He movingly painted a picture of the Christchurch he remembered from his youth – one where you could ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon – and spoke of his optimism for the future and of the rebuilding of the town where he spent his childhood.

Next up was Raj Jain, who delivered an advanced humourous speech entitled “No bad decisions please”. Raj’s speech was driven by the idea that while it might take many good decisions to reach a point of success in one’s life, just one bad decision could doom us quickly to failure! With his trademark presence and confidence Raj led us through a number of humourous scenarios to illustrate his point, including examples from his own experience.

Finally, Femi Asaolu followed up his popular advanced speech from a previous meeting – about falling in and out of love with London Underground – with a second part expressing his frustrations with lost past glory of a once pioneering network and his personal explanation for the decline – and even a possible solution!

After a short break, evaluations of the four speeches were given by Kate Osborne, Nazia Soon, Adam Horne and Fabrizio Palmucci.

Table topics

Following the evaluations, came the popular table topics section, an opportunity for members to practice their impromptu speaking.

Inspired by the fact that February is LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) History month, Alex Donald ran a lively table topics session using quotes from famous people including Oscar Wilde, Freddie Mercury and Michael Stipe.

Members and guests alike gave short, off-the-cuff speeches reacting to numerous quotes including: “Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much” (Wilde) and “Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from” (Jodie Foster).

After Alex wrapped up a very enjoyable session, new member (but Toastmasters veteran) Dave Longley then had the very tall order of evaluating all nine table topics speakers but was still able to give useful and insightful commendations and recommendations to each one.

Sony Solomon from Citi Criers gave a detailed and insightful evaluation of the club as a whole and of all those members who had not been evaluated by someone else. He commended Bloomsbury on various aspects of the meeting – even saying he would borrow some ideas for his own club! However, he also said he had missed the role of Grammarian (who would encourage speakers to use a chosen “word of the day” and give a report on use of language), which had not been filled that evening.

Awards

When it was finally time to give out the awards, first-time guest Anita won the prize for best table topic for her tackling of the quote “He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year”. Best evaluator went to Fabrizio, for his evaluation of Femi’s speech, and rather fittingly Femi himself won the prize for best speech. The president’s discretionary award went to Henry for his commendable performance during his first time as Toastmaster.

Next meeting – contest!

The next meeting will be on Monday, 14th March 2011 and is in fact the club-level International Speech and Evaluation Contest. Club members will compete to deliver the best prepared speech and also the best evaluation of a secret speaker.

Forthcoming workshop

Also, on Monday, 4 April 2011 there will be a table topics workshop where attendees will get useful tips for tackling impromptu speaking and get the opportunity to give several speeches in the same evening. This is a rerun of the very successful workshop run towards the end of last year.