President Nazia Soon opened proceedings with her trademark warmth and enthusiasm and took the opportunity of her President’s welcome to remind the club that she would be stepping down at the end of June and a new committee would be taking over.

She encouraged members to step up to fill the role of Sergeant at Arms – who is responsible for setting up the room at the start of every meeting – before handing over to Glen Long for a quick report from the previous weekend’s District Conference.

Glen spent a few minutes giving a brief overview of the conference with its three pillars of “education, competition and conversation”. The conference had included the final of the International Speech Contest (with the winner going on to compete in Las Vegas!) and he had been very impressed with the very high standard of the eight speakers.

Toastmaster Todd Wade took as his theme the power of humour, talking us through Barack Obama’s very funny recent comments at the annual correspondent’s dinner by way of example. With great energy and charisma Todd introduced the evening’s agenda before handing over Hari Kalymnios, the Timekeeper for the meeting.

Hari did a great job of explaining the role and emphasised the importance of effective time management as one of the cornerstones of effective public speaking. He also warned us that he wouldn’t be shy in using the gavel for those speakers who strayed over their allotted time!

Saira Iqbal from Canary Wharf Communicators took on the role of Grammarian, introducing a Word of the Day – germane – and encouraging all speakers to use where possible. She explained that she would be looking out for particularly good (and bad) uses of grammar and language and reporting back to us all at the end.

Prepared speeches

Todd introduced the first speaker – Elena Fanaberova – who delivered a very impressive icebreaker speech entitled: “Big City, Big River and Big Plans”. In her speech Elena told us about her home town in Russia, which is about 600 miles from Moscow, and her early life and family. She also told us of her love of travel and her mother’s observation quite early on that she clearly had the “travel bug”.

Next was a number six speech (focussing on vocal variety) by club regular Henry Playfoot entitled “Home Swap”. In a very assured and entertaining speech about a series of cost-cutting holidays where he and his family swapped residences with strangers in other countries, Henry recounted some great experiences in Brittany and Paris (and one not-so-great experience in Spain!) and finished by urging those of us in the position to try house swapping to do so, but to do our research first!

The final speech – also a number six – was “The Message” by club secretary Kate Osborne. In a touching and inspiring speech Kate told us about her university friend Buzz and his epiphany about the secrets to happiness borne out of a “near death” experience in hospital. Buzz’s formula was simple: have goals, maintain a positive mindset, and strive to make others happy.

After a quick Timekeeper’s report (thankfully no-one had incurred the wrath of Hari’s gavel!) and an opportunity for the guests to briefly introduce themselves to the room, there was a short break for refreshments and a brief catch-up.

Speech evaluations

After the break, Todd opened the evaluations portion of the evening by introducing the first evaluator – Swarajit Das.

In his first ever evaluation (not that you’d know), Swarajit commended Elena on her impressive lack of notes and her choice to use a presentation to show slides complementing her speech – both rare for an Icebreaker speech. His main recommendation was that Elena make better use of pauses to give the audience a chance to digest the information.

Club President Nazia Soon evaluated Henry’s speech on house swapping. She was impressed by Henry’s use of body language to add drama, and the way he dropped his volume to add suspense. She recommended making better use of pauses and using even more vocal variety and projection.

Highly experienced evaluator Ratan Lele took on the task of analysing Kate’s speech “The Message”. He commended Kate on her voice – which he found “very pleasant” to listen to – and her choice of a good, strong standing position. He encouraged Kate to experiment with even more vocal variety and – like Elena – better harness the power of the pause.

Table Topics

Having barely sat down, Ratan stepped back up in his additional role of Topicsmaster – overseeing the table topics (impromptu speaking) section of the evening. He chose the simple but powerful theme of emotions, and invited speakers to tell us exactly what provoked in them specific emotions, such as happiness, anger and sadness.

Over the next 15 minutes or so, we learnt that connecting with people makes Henry happy, helping people develop their skills makes Hari proud, and hearing the same thing repeated over and over again makes Dave bored.

We also learned that we wouldn’t like to see Terry when he is angry, nothing relaxes Cecilia better than beautiful scenery and time with her husband, and that Ewan has lots of reasons to be cheerful and very few for being annoyed.

And finally we learned that public speaking makes Mehnaz fearful (but less so with each table topic), having a working knee again makes Alex grateful, and small steps not taken that could have made a difference make Glen sad.

Glen stepped straight back up as topics evaluator and had his work cut out evaluating nine table topics speakers (including himself!):

• He commended Henry on his authenticity and Hari on his instant three point structure and personal examples.
• Terry was congratulated for his effective use of escalating vocal volume and Ewan for his clever “switcheroo”.
• Cecilia was commended on her wonderfully warm and inclusive manner and Dave on his very germane choice of topic.
• Mehnaz was very composed and coherent while Alex told a great story that tied back into the theme.

During her Grammarian’s report, Saira picked out numerous examples of good grammar and effective language by the speakers and was pleased to report that (despite a slow start), six people made use of the word of the day. All in all a very thorough and commendable performance, particularly since Saira is very new to Toastmasters and this was her first time in the role!

Kedar Godbole – from Trojan Speakers in Ealing – acted as general evaluator and opened by commending Bloomsbury Speakers on its location, i.e. a room above a pub! In a very thorough evaluation, Kedar had commendations and recommendations for all.

All that remained was the presentation of prizes based on votes cast during the evening. Best evaluator went to Glen, best table topic speaker to Henry and best speaker to Kate. Elena received a certificate for successfully completing her Icebreaker speech – an important landmark for any Toastmaster.

The President’s discretionary award when to Saira, for her impressive efforts as Grammarian.

The next meeting is on Monday, 23 May 2011 at our normal venue.