Meeting Report for 26 September 2011

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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:

  1. What are the vision, mission and values for the project?
  2. How supportive are you as a leader?
  3. How well do you develop your team?
  4. How well do you show appreciation to your team?
  5. How well do you direct your team?
  6. 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!

Contest Report – 12 September 2011

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By Elena Fanaberova. (Edited by Glen Long).

This Monday Bloomsbury Speakers hosted its Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest, with five club members competing in each contest.

Dave Longley acted as contest chair and did a great job of setting the context for competitions from a Toastmasters perspective:

Speech contests are an important part of the Toastmasters educational program. They provide an opportunity for Toastmasters to gain speaking experience, as well as an opportunity for other Toastmasters to learn by observing proficient speakers.

Dave

Dave Longley as Contest Chair

Humorous Speech Contest

Glen Long, who had drawn first position when lots were drawn, opened the contest with his speech entitled “Save Our Zoo”, and introduced the world’s first and only “figurative zoo”. As the zoo’s director he talked about several unusual animals including a lame duck, a high horse and the elephant in the room!

Glen

Glen Long giving his prepared speech “Save Our Zoo”

Joe Lake spoke next with a speech “Neighbours” in which he talked about an experience while viewing a property – a tall tale involving an encounter with a weird neighbour, a cup of tea and a rather too detachable wig.

Joe

Joe Lake giving his prepared speech “Neighbours”

In his contest speech “Getting There” Terry told a story about being almost thwarted in trying to get to his destination by erratic house numbering – but it all ended happily with a beer and a bag of fish and chips.

Terry

Terry Freedman giving his prepared speech “Getting There”

Neil Ward, in his speech “Awkward Situations” described one such awkward situation when he was recently in a business meeting and one of the participants told a story how he broke his both arms – because of a kamikaze squirrel! Sadly Neil’s giggling did not impress his business prospects…

Neil

Neil Ward giving his prepared speech “Awkward Situations”

Rounding up the prepared speeches, Todd Wade put forward a strong case for reclassifying chihuahuas as “dog rats” to remove the stigma of using them for food and clothing!

Todd

Todd Wade giving his prepared speech “Species”.

Table Topics Contest

For the Table Topics contest, each contestant was called to speak on the same topic, with speakers waiting outside the room until it was their turn to speak.

The topics question all speakers had to tackle was:

Some people say that at a very deep level we are all connected to each other, that at a deep level the whole of humanity is related. What do you think?

First speaker Neil suggested that it is true because looking back into the history we can track our kin back to a single place we all come from.

AG

AG giving her table topics speech

AG said there are a number of ways which connect us all, such as genetic links to Africa regardless of where we live and same values, principles about morality, beliefs.

Joe Lake demonstrated the idea in action by describing a three-legged race at school, where only by becoming more in sync with each other could he and his brother eventually win the race.

Todd Wade described how other people’s smiles made him feel connected with the world but questioned the idea that we are all connected, despite the degrees of separation theory.

Glen cited the example of twins separated by long distance yet feeling
the same emotionally and also of blue tits learning to peck the foil at the top of milk bottles at the same time to prove that many species are connected but we have yet to discover the extent of these connections.

Results

When the judges’ ballots had been counted and checked the results were announced.

In the Table Topics contest, Glen was placed first, Todd second and Joe third.

In the Humorous Speech contest, the line-up was exactly the same! Glen first, Todd second and Joe third.

Thanks!

Many thanks to everyone who volunteered their time to help the contest run smoothly – including judges, ushers and vote counters.

Thanks in particular to Dave Longley for pulling it all together as Contest Chair and to Petra Jakubekova of Riverside Communicators for being our Chief Judge!

The Next Round – Area 34 Contest

The Area 34 Table Topics & Humorous Speech Contest is on Wednesday 21 September 2011 at:

10th Floor Meeting Room
55 Broadway
London
SW1H 0BD

This is London Underground’s Head Office located at St James’s Park Tube Station (Circle Line & District Line). Use the Broadway Exit.

Arrive 6:30pm for a 7pm start.

Please note all attendees must email John.Nyaruwa@tube.tfl.gov.uk so that passes may be arranged for them.

Club Newsletter – September 2011

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Hello and welcome to the September Newsletter!

August was an interesting month – particularly for those of us living in London! – but despite the rubbish weather and the unusual events at the start of the month it was a good one for Bloomsbury Speakers.

Recent news

We had two very well-attended meetings in August at our backup venue The Lamb. New members fearlessly took on challenging functionary roles (Neil and Karan as Topicsmasters and Joe as Topics Evaluator) without breaking stride and we were also treated to a couple of great Ice Breaker speeches from Ann and Terry.

Further afield, the Toastmasters World Convention took place in Las Vegas, and Australian Jock Elliot was crowned the World Champion of Public Speaking, while local boy and member of Croydon Speakers Malachi Talabi put in a sterling performance on behalf of the Brits, coming third in his semi-final heat. Also, the new Toastmasters brand was unveiled.

What’s happening this month?

There’s lots going on in September, but you’ll have to pay attention to catch it all because we’re moving around* a bit!

Andrew Brammer’s Storytelling Workshop – Monday 5th (SOLD OUT!)

Sadly there are no more places left on this but we’re aiming to do a write-up of the workshop for the website and if there’s enough demand we could certainly talk to Andrew about running it again in future.

The confirmed venue for this workshop is: Bertrand Russell Room, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL.

Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest – Monday 12th September

There are still slots to enter one or both of these contests! You’ll be competing against familiar faces and you’ve still got time to prepare a speech. Don’t be the one kicking yourself you didn’t take part – it only comes round but once a year.

Even if you’re not competing please come along to support those who are – it should be a really fun evening.

The confirmed venue for the contests is: 1-3 Newton Street, London, WC2B 5EL. Please note this is very near Holborn station but it’s a new venue for us so make sure you check out the map.

Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest – Area 34 Final – Wednesday 21st September

The winners from each of the club contests in Area 34 (City of London Toastmasters, Holborn Speakers, London Business School Speakers, Tube Talk and of course Bloomsbury Speakers) will compete to see who goes on to the Division B final.

We need some volunteers to be vote counters and a timekeeper at this contest. No previous experience required and it’s a great way to meet some new people outside the club. Get in contact!

Regular Meeting – Monday 26th September

This meeting is now available for booking in ClubPlan so make sure you book yourself in. There’s still plenty of time to prepare a speech, but if you don’t fancy that why not book in to do a role you haven’t done before?

*apologies for the “venue tennis” happening in August and September. Our regular venue the Rugby Tavern is closed for refurbishments and we’ve had to be a bit creative with alternative venues. Just make sure you check the website before leaving for a meeting!

What do YOU want from the club?

The club is run for the benefit of all its members so please let me know what you’d like to see more (or less!) of at Bloomsbury Speakers.

Here are a few possibilities, but please suggest some of your own:

  • Debating Meeting – a special meeting where the table topics section (or perhaps the whole meeting) is thrown open to a series of mini-debates, where two speakers argue opposite sides of an issue
  • Table Topics Workshop – we’ve run these very successfully in the past: basically an extra meeting where attendees get to practice lots of table topics
  • Evaluation Workshop – giving and receiving good evaluations is one of the cornerstones of the Competent Communicator programme so I’m looking into getting an experienced evaluator to run a workshop to give us all some tips

Just drop me a line at president@bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk telling which of the above you’re keen on and any other ideas you might have.

Three Easy Ways To Support Bloomsbury Speakers

I’m passionate about establishing Bloomsbury as a fun and friendly club, not just in the real world through our twice-monthly meetings, but also in the virtual world through our various online presences.

Here are three quick and simple things you can do to help the club thrive online as well as offline:

  • Join our Meetup group – you can get handy meeting reminders and also let us know when you’re attending meetings (and what you thought of them!)
  • Like us on Facebook – you’ll see updates from Bloomsbury Speakers in your newsfeed and we’ll get to connect with you too
  • Follow us on Twitter – if you’re on Twitter then follow us for occasional updates and we’ll follow you back. Win win!

Tip of the Month – TED

Some of you will know about TED already, but for those of you who don’t, it’s an amazing resource featuring hundreds of free talks – between 5 and 20 minutes long – by some of the world’s best speakers.

Not only are many of them fascinating in their own right, but you can of course learn lessons for your own speeches from watching other speakers.

Here are three of my favourites:

That’s it for this month’s newsletter. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to include in the next newsletter and hope to see you at a meeting soon.

Best wishes,

Glen Long
President
Bloomsbury Speakers

Meeting Report for 22 August 2011

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Written by Elena Fanaberova (edited by Glen Long)

Introduction

The meeting was opened by Club President Glen Long. In his introduction he referred to the new design rebranding of Toastmasters International and invited members to “rebrand” their relationship with Toastmasters as being “in training to be an excellent communicator”.

Then Glen handed the meeting over to the past Club President and a very experienced Toastmaster, Nazia Soon. She explained how each part of the agenda worked and how each section supports the Toastmaster’s Communication and Leadership educational programs. After this she introduced the theme for the meeting – Leadership – and explained that she would be introducing each speaker with the answer they had given to her question: “Which Leadership skills do you value the most?”

Nazia then explained that she would be supported in her role by other club members and introduced the evening’s Timekeeper Elena Fanaberova, followed by Harkmaster Terry Freedman.

Prepared speeches

The Prepared Speeches were started with new member Ann Connolly’s Ice Breaker speech entitled “One Small Step For Ann”. In her captivating speech Ann told us about her great childhood memories which were closely associated with her mother and grandmother (who taught her to cook – and smoke!). She also told us about her life in her twenties when she worked in various countries and learnt a lot about how to start from scratch.

Finishing with a quote from Goethe, she reminded us that the moment we commit ourselves to something we get rid of any hesitation and get empowered to achieve what we want.

Next was a No. 8 speech (whose aim is to “Get Comfortable With Visual Aids”) entitled “Art”. Todd Wade focused on the subjective valuation of art and why some art may be considered excellent when some other art might be perceived as just rubbish. While handing out pictures of some of the “works” of Damien Hirst such as Stuffed Shark, Butterfly Exhibition and Medicine Exhibition, he questioned their true value and concluded that collectors are not buying a piece of art, but a brand.

The final speech – also a No. 8 – was “Moon Shine” by club secretary Kate Osborne. She illustrated the four main moon phases, how their changing is believed by some people to affect our lives and how to best behave during each phase to get most benefit from the “waxing” and “waning”.

After a quick Timekeeper’s report and an opportunity for the guests to briefly introduce themselves to the room – led by our newest member AG – there was a short break.

Speech evaluations

After the break, Nazia opened the evaluations portion of the evening by introducing the first evaluator – Adam Horne. Adam said it was his great pleasure to evaluate Ann’s wonderful ice breaker speech. He felt that all objectives had been met: good structure of the speech, confident voice and engagement with the audience. Adam gave only one small recommendation for Ann – to grab the stage and stand forward.

The next evaluator, Fabrizio Palmucci, evaluated Todd’s striking speech. He commented on Todd’s great stage presence, his good speech delivery using visual materials and the deeply researched topic, but would have liked to have seen the purpose more clearly in his conclusion. He added that he felt the speech structure was impeccable.

The last evaluator of the meeting, Alex Goldsbrough, evaluated Kate’s moon speech. He commented that this time Kate seemed a lot more relaxed and in control than in some previous speeches. Alex reminded Kate that the fundamental objective for speech No. 8 is to use visual aids and suggested Kate to be more creative with hers (a useful tip for all speakers) as well as to use more hand gestures.

Table Topics

Karan Daswani stepped up as Topics Master to lead the impromptu speaking section of the evening. He chose the simple but powerful theme of the people’s most memorable experiences.

  • Swarajit shared with us his memorable experience of visiting Brighton beach and how his dreams about the perfect beach were shattered when he found that it was pebbles not sand;
  • AG’s most memorable experience of traveling abroad was her first ever holiday in Italy with her parents – particularly how she enjoyed the pizza in the Luciano Pavarotti cafe;
  • Guest Anne spoke about a memorable experience of traveling two months ago in a Hummer to Las Vegas and how a trip through the National Park took much longer than expected;
  • Adam told us about his most memorable experience with friends on holiday when he was in Sweden and nobody spoke English – so his friend ended up ordering food ‘blind’ and was presented with a dish of herring with five shots of spirit;
  • Dave’s most memorable experience of an entertainment event was attending a storytelling workshop with a top speaker;
  • Alex told us the story of his memorable BBQ in the middle of winter in US where he was served a burger made from roadkilled Elk!
  • Terry spoke about a memorable experience of a book, falling back on fond memories of A.A. Milne and Winnie The Pooh;
  • Glen spoke about his experience of doing nothing, just staring into a roaring fire after an exhausting day grape-picking in France

Table Topics Evaluator Joe Lake – in his first ever evaluation role! – did a great job of providing commendations and recommendations for all eight table topics speakers – and finishing within time.

In conclusion of this section of the meeting Terry’s final Harkmaster’s Report tested our listening and memory by asking “who said what?” and rewarded correct answers with chocolates (only 30 calories each we were assured!)

Evaluating all those who had not yet been evaluated, our General Evaluator (and Area Governor) Ken Adjei had some great pointers for the club and was much impressed by the inclusion of the Harkmaster role.

Awards

Closing the meeting, Glen gave out the awards based on votes cast during the evening.

The Best Evaluator award went to Joe, the Best Table Topics speaker award to Terry and the “highly coveted” Best Speaker award to Ann, who also received a certificate for successfully completing her Icebreaker speech – an important landmark for any Toastmaster.

The President’s discretionary award went to AG for her role as guest introducer.

Wrapping up, Glen announced the upcoming competitions and the workshops.

Next meeting

The next event is Monday 5th September 2011 – Andrew Brammer’s Storytelling Workshop, arrive from 6.30pm for a 6.45pm start. Tickets going fast so book here.

The next meeting is the Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contests on 12th September. There’s still time to enter – just book your slot on ClubPlan.

Meeting Report for 8 August 2011

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By Elena Fanaberova

Introduction

The meeting was opened by Club President Glen Long who explained, for the benefit of guests, that Bloomsbury Speakers is part of a huge Toastmaster’s family which has 250,000 members across the world, emphasizing that it is a “learning by doing” environment because practice is absolutely the best way to get better.

Then he told us the personal story of having his mood lifted one rainy morning by seeing a grown man racing down a big hill on his bicycle shouting “wheeeee!”. He then invited everyone in the room to stand and ride their own imaginary bike down a hill with the same enthusiasm. The aim of regular practice of public speaking, he suggested, was to turn self-consciousness and nervousness into the fun and exhilaration of freewheeling down a big hill. Allowing everyone to sit back down, Glen then handed the meeting over to the evening’s Toastmaster Alex Goldsbrough.

Alex announced changes in the agenda and outlined the structure of the meeting. After that he introduced his helpers for the evening, the Timekeeper Adam Horne and the Grammarian Stella Meadows, who gave us the Word of the Day – “girdle” – and invited as many people to use it as possible.

Prepared Speeches

Well known to the club for his entertaining Table Topics speeches, Terry Freedman kicked off the prepared speeches by giving his ice breaker speech entitled “How Did We Get There?”. Terry shared with us his experience of a train trip to Venice, where he smelt the Mediterranean herbs as the sea and land glided past at 60 miles per hour. He observed that people these days tend to try to get somewhere as quickly as possible and often miss many special moments of travelling.

In his No.2 speech “Social Networking” Joe Lake tackled the topic of social networking from different points of view and asked if it was taking over our lives. In his conclusion, Joe decided that it is a force for good when used to build positive relationships as long as people also get to talk face to face on a regular basis!

In another No. 2 speech entitled “Social Proof – Revealing Truths” Karan Daswani discovered through his research that we tend to be influenced a lot more by what people around us say or do than by any facts. Karan also told a personal story about his brother who would not swim without his “Mr Duck” inflatable toy until he saw another boy do it, despite his parents attempts to convince for 3 months without success.

In his No.4 speech “The Best Years Of Your Life” Swarajit Das used great humour to tell stories from his school days, likening his experiences to a campaign of war! We heard how he had confronted a girl who terrorized him about his weight with some verbal terror of his own, and later how he had bought a top-of-the-range mobile phone to impress fellow pupils – only to discover there was no reception at the school!

Before the break, new member Ann Connolly did a fantastically warm job of leading the guest introductions, inviting new visitors to explain what had brought them to the meeting.

Evaluations

After the break Toastmaster Alex welcomed us back for the second part of the meeting and introduced the first evaluator, Femi Asaolu, who evaluated Terry’s ice breaker speech.

First of all Femi noted that the main objective of the ice breaker is simply to speak in front of the audience and Terry had met this soon after joining the club over a year ago with his numerous Table Topics! The second objective is to discover skills that a speaker already has and Femi commented that Terry already has a very good style of delivery and on the content side his language is very descriptive.

The next evaluator, Guy Smith, evaluated Joe Lake’s speech about social networking. Guy said that the structure of the speech was very good with a clear introduction, making his arguments in the middle, and finishing with an effective conclusion. He commended the use of rhetorical questions and effective use of statistics. Guy’s only recommendation was to put positive and negative arguments into separate chunks to reduce frequent changes between positives and negatives, which is more difficult to follow.

The third evaluator was Dave Longley. Evaluating Karan’s speech, Dave commented that fundamental objective of the speech No.2 is to organise one’s speech and Karen had certainly achieved that with his good structure. Dave also noted that Karen’s speech was well delivered and researched. Dave simply suggested expanding the eye contact to include the edges of the audience – not just the centre of it.

The last evaluator, Glen Long, evaluated Swarajit’s speech. Glen commended the great comic premise in Swarajit’s speech, his effective structure, and his good use of tone and hand gestures. Among his recommendations were suggestions to use a slightly more upbeat tone to offset some of the darker elements for comic effect, change the tone and pace to signpost the jokes and have a stronger conclusion that returned to the main theme.

Table Topics

Standing in at short notice as Topicsmaster, new member Neil Ward introduced the theme of job interviews and invited volunteer impromptu speakers to tell us why they were the best person to fill a number of interesting vacancies:

  • Adam said he would be ideal as the Head of European Space Agency because: he likes space, is the right build for an astronaut’s suit, and will get on well with all Europeans as he’s Australian!
  • Will made a strong case as a future Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police: he has always been interested in law and order (though not necessarily sticking to it!), has a short enough criminal record to get the job and would bring a lot of passion as he really likes London.
  • Ray, interviewing for the British Embassador to Iceland emphasised the value of having just six months experience in his current role (just enough apparently!), told us he knows more about finance than most Icelanders and has even been to Iceland recently!
  • Terry staked his claim on the job of Lady Gaga’s Business Manager saying he will ensure that everyone loves this singer as much as he does!
  • Karan, applying for job of Pelican Master General in Hyde Park explain how he admires these birds and how they fly, likes animals (he has had dogs, rabbits and other animals at home) and is good at organising things so the animals are well fed and taken care of.
  • Guy, trying to get the job of Royal Advisor to the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge, told us they were the perfect couple, that he had been the first person in the queue the day they got married, and also revealed that he has walls at home dedicated to them individually and as a couple!
  • Marty as a potential new CEO of Tesco said he had the right experience, having been CEO of Sainsburys for 3 years, would single-handedly revolutionize what people think about wine and would get employees who were happier and more ready to serve people.

Table Topics Evaluator Hari Kalymnios presented his evaluation of all seven impromptu speakers, doing a great job of pinpointing the strong sides of their speeches as well as indicating things that could have been better.

Grammarian Stella gave her report on the use of language in the meeting: the Word of the Day “girdle” was used in an appropriate context eight times, and she noted there were some great use of humour and colourful expressions, but she recommended that people watch their crutch words and phrases, such as “you know”, “ok”, and “erm”.

General Evaluator Jennifer Zou gave an evaluation for all those participants who had not yet been evaluated and this was followed by Glen as President bringing the meeting to a close with awards and announcements.

Awards and Announcements

Best Table Topics speech was awarded to Guy for his Royal Advisor application. Best Evaluator went to Dave for his evaluation of Karan’s speech. Best Speaker went to Karan for his speech about Social Proof. And the President’s discretionary award went to Neil for his first-time role as Topicsmaster.

Glen reminded attendees of the special Story Workshop being held on 5th September, and the club’s Humorous Speech and Table Topics contest on the 12th September.

The next meeting is Monday 22 August 2011 at The Lamb, 94 Lambs Conduit Street, London.