Meeting Report for 26 September 2011
Introductions
Monday’s meeting saw Bloomsbury Speakers safely back in its regular venue of the Rugby Tavern after a couple of months of venue-hopping while the Tavern was being refurbished.
Club president Glen Long opened the meeting by saying how pleased he was to be back ‘home’ and commented on how great the pub looked after all the work. He welcomed members and guests, thanking everyone for choosing to spend their Monday night with Toastmasters rather than in front of the television and he even gave us a quick breakdown of exactly what we were missing on TV!
He went on to apologise for a “perfect storm” of last minute absences which meant that a few members would be covering more than one role in the agenda but promised to make the evening as fun and enjoyable as possible.
After an overview of the club for the benefit of the new visitors he handed over proceedings to regular member and advanced speaker Femi Asaolu, the Toastmaster for the evening.
Femi started by introducing his chosen theme – the answer to the question: What have you never done that you’ve always wanted to do? – and invited audience members to give a brief answer. Many wished for trips to far-flung travel destinations but there were also some would-be adrenaline junkies who wanted to sky-dive and bungee jump!
Femi then introduced Kate Osborne as the evening’s Timekeeper, who first reminded us of the importance of being able to express ideas within a limited amount of time and then took us through the “traffic light” system used to alert speakers of elapsed time within their allocated speaking slots.
Prepared speeches
The first speaker was relatively new member Joe Lake who is already on his third prepared speech! In “Making Progress” Joe asked why do we strive for success? It’s hard work – and we often suffer setbacks and frustrations – so why do we bother? Well, he argued, we strive for lots of reasons, including trying to make life better for others.
In an inspiring and practical speech, Joe gave us three tips for improving our chances of success: 1) Keep it simple, 2) Keep faith in yourself and 3) Keep learning.
The second speech was by advanced speaker and past president Nazia Soon who told us about her High Performance Leadership project which had been focussed on setting up Bloomsbury Speakers at the end of 2009 and building the team necessary to grow it into a stable and thriving Toastmasters club.
The project required her to assess her abilities as a leader in six different areas by answering the following questions:
- What are the vision, mission and values for the project?
- How supportive are you as a leader?
- How well do you develop your team?
- How well do you show appreciation to your team?
- How well do you direct your team?
- How persuasive are you?
After Nazia’s speech – and since we were a speaker short on the agenda – Femi invited Glen up to the front to deliver his humorous speech from last week’s area contest “Save Our Zoo!” which raised a few smiles and took us nicely into the break.
After grabbing some refreshments from the bar everyone returned for the second half, which started with the evaluations of the prepared speeches.
Speech evaluations
Returning member Babur Yusupov stepped in at short notice (thanks Babur!) to evaluate Joe’s No. 3 speech. He started by reminding us of the speech objectives and then commended Joe on a very strong message, a great use of quotes (from luminaries such as Bernard Shaw and Churchill) and on a very effective “tripartite structure”. He also commended Joe’s good use of imagery and hand gestures but recommended that he slowed his pace occassionally to help emphasise key points.
Femi took on the role of evaluator for Nazia’s advanced speech. He started by saying that he thought of her as a very eloquent speaker and commended her use of emphatic hand gestures. In terms of recommendations, Femi said he felt the speech could benefit from a tighter structure to really set the context for the speech and also tie the theme of the importance of leadership more closely into the main topic of the speech. Overall he found it engaging and encouraged her to take on his recommendations!
Table Topics
After her evaluation by Femi, Nazia stepped back up in as the evening’s Topicsmaster to introduce her chosen theme for the table topics section. “The career paradigm has completely changed” she told us. “People are doing all sorts of jobs”. And this was the starting point for a lively session centred around job interviews.
She invited volunteers up one by one to give a short impromptu speech of 1 – 2 minutes telling us why they were the right candidate for a range of quite unusual jobs:
- Joe was invited to explain why he’d make a good tattoo artist and body piercer. He admitted it wasn’t a childhood dream of his to become a tattooist and on reflection concluded that he wasn’t suitable as he didn’t really like inflicting pain on people.
- Guest Lila was asked to pitch herself in the role of aroma tester – a job which involving sniffing people’s armpits to determine the effectiveness of their deodorants! We learned from her that the trick to applying deodorant is to create a balance between the artificial scent and one’s own natural scent. Who knew?
- Guest Stuart was invited to take over product development at Apple. He openly admitted that he wasn’t personally a user of Apple products but would quite like to work for a competitor. He even suggested a new product range: the uPod, the uPhone and the uPad (patents pending…)
- Babur was invited to lead an Indian-style laughing club for office workers. By way of some very creative corporate jargon he persuaded us that he was the ideal candidate, although his strategy for boosting morale seem to involve taking everyone out for a drink and not returning to work afterwards!
- Guest Jo was up for the position of pet therapist and felt that her lack of pet allergies was a definite strength. However, she wasn’t keen on emptying cat litter trays or capable of anything other than very basic dog grooming so quickly decided it wasn’t the job for her and withdrew her application!
- Finally guest John was invited to apply for the job of voice analyst, helping the police solve serious crimes. He impressed us with his language from the very start saying that he was interested in the “nuances of human interaction” and concluded strongly by saying that although he had no actual qualifications for the job he could offer double enthusiasm!
After the last of the topics speakers, Glen stepped up as topics evaluator, providing commendations and recommendations for all speakers:
- He congratulated Joe on his good humour and confident body language but would have like to see him “playing the part” more to persuade us he really wanted the job as tattooist.
- He commended Lila’s strong and varied hand gestures and for really tackling the topic head on, but recommended a slightly clearer structure.
- He was impressed by Stuart’s use of vocabulary and generally good eye contact but warned against looking up at the ceiling too much while thinking.
- He enjoyed Babur’s comic use of jargon and his easy manner but would have liked a longer speech and recommended him to “just go for it”.
- He liked Jo’s confident manner and honest tackling of the topics, but gave some tips on sharing eye contact around the room and adopting a more solid posture.
- He commended John’s use of language and his infectious enthusiasm and was particularly impressed by his strong finish – his only recommendation was a clearer progression in the middle of the speech.
General evaluation
Our general evaluator Michaela Talbot (from Holborn Speakers) then gave her evaluation of the club as a whole and of all those participants who had not yet received a formal assessment.
She admitted that she had had high expectations of the club due to Bloomsbury’s historical links to Holborn Speakers and (fortunately!) said she had not been disappointed. She commented on the very friendly welcome she had received from committee members but noted that the meeting had started late and recommended in future that more be done to adapt the agenda be to allow time for latecomers to arrive.
Awards and announcements
Wrapping up the meeting, Glen awarded the prize for best table topic to first-time guest Lila, based on votes cast by the audience. Well done Lila!
The next meeting is on Monday 10th October again at The Rugby Tavern.
Members should book roles and speeches on ClubPlan as usual.
Club social!
Our club treasurer Swarajit Das is organising a club social on Monday 3rd October for members and guest. Exact details are still to be confirmed but we’ll be meeting at about 7pm in the Holborn area and going for some drinks and probably also some food!
Please drop him a line at treasurer@bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk if you’re thinking of coming along. The more the merrier!
