Spring Newsletter – May 2020
A mega desk show propped by virtual handshakes, muted applause and silent cheers.
An audience safely fitted within 3×4 grid boxes, proudly flaunting their unique surroundings, which are funky and fascinating, and sometimes bizarre and absurdly mind blogging.
A sunny holiday in Hawaii, trekking in Virginia Lake, an exotic bar in a classy fish free aquarium, a gigantic cat floating in the solar system, the tranquil deep blue seashore and mysteriously revolving donuts of 12 different varieties in some odd blue space!
The public speaking stage is now very different.
The entire planet is suddenly thrust and vacuumed into your digital screen. A perfect pitch for your imaginary world for that nerve racking table topic, except it’s real.
Over the last 10 weeks, the world has Zoomed in and by now we have a pretty good grasp of this bizarre virtual transformation (well almost!).
But our members and guests are making the most of this new, digital setting. Our platform is more global than ever before.
In this newsletter, we will cover more on our online meetings as well as
- Spring contests – the results
- Online meet ups – what’s new
- Club socials
- Member tips
- New committee
- Competent Communicator awards
- Membership fees
- Upcoming meeting dates
Spring contests – the results!
This year’s club round of the International Speech and Evaluation contests were held in February and had some mind-boggling twist and turns.
Mara, won our Evaluation contest and Helen won the International Speech contest, with Raymond placing second. Mara and Raymond (as Helen was unavailable) then represented the club at the Area 2 final against the winners from other clubs in our locality – with Mara again placing first against some tough competition to qualify for the Division C final!
With new social distancing rules in place, the later rounds of the contests were held online. This indeed gave a very different feel to the competition, especially when the stage is at the mercy of your internet connection! Mara surpassed the challenge of both the technology and the absence of a real stage and made the club proud with her wins.
Here’s her take on participating in the competition:
“I learnt so much more about the evaluation process. One thing I would say is that I couldn’t have done it without the support of the club, especially not without the support of our president Margarita who encouraged me to participate in the contest and helped me become more confident in my role as an evaluator.”
Competitions are a great way to challenge yourself, enhance your abilities and identify your true potential. While the Humorous Speech and Table Topics competition will be in the Autumn, we encourage you to participate in regular meetings, book in new speeches and take up more functionary roles.
Toastmasters is a safe and friendly way to improve your public speaking, and also partly competitive where members are evaluated on their performance and recognised for excellence. So, keep signing up and attending the club meetings.
Online meet ups – what’s new?
For the time being, all our meetings are now being held online via Zoom. The agenda remains the same and all roles and speeches are performed in the same manner as you would experience in a regular setting, but with a bit of a twist!
The timekeeper role, in particular, has taken a creative turn. Changing the screen backgrounds, the use of imagery and the novel introduction of a digital gavel by Stirling has worked very well.
Sometimes (and as a rare event) the timekeeper himself becomes the colour or a sign post, as you can see below, our timekeeper Swarajit turned into a glaring yellow warning sign in one of the meetings –
Feedback and voting are done through the chatbox and the poll options, and the winners receive a hearty, (and in this case) unmuted round of applause along with our president Margarita’s very encouraging and highly energetic cheering.
And here are some more pictures from our last meetings…
Club Socials
We at Bloomsbury Speakers love our socials. While the weather is perfect to equally lure both trekkers and non-trekkers (or anything to do with the sun), our last social was a quirky and fun virtual catch up on Zoom (which also swerved into some kind of a lockdown drawing session!).
This picture went viral on our Bloomsbury Speakers chat group. The message is loud and clear – Stay Home and Stay safe (the rest is up for individual interpretation).
Also, a very warm welcome to Luisa who is now back from her 10 month travel expedition. It’s great to have you back!
A quick throwback of our pre lockdown down social – Valentine’s day celebrations and Luisa’s welcome party.
Excelling in your online meetings – member tips
The importance of being a good speaker and a communicator is even more important now as we are under greater pressure of speaking well on camera. We thought of sharing some handy tips and our long time member Matt has some interesting takeaways:
‘Competing on a screen is quite surreal. Sure, it’s easier as you don’t have an audience to make you feel nervous. But with an audience watching you, you can perform easily, by gauging their facial reactions to your points. When an audience is present, you also have the luxury of moving around a stage and making strong eye contact with everyone in the room. But with a laptop, you have to stand still and stare into a small dot.
I notice a lot of people in the initial stages sitting down to do their speeches. This is a big faux pas as it lulls you into a false sense of security as if you are attending a business meeting.
- Stand up to pitch. This also allows you to get more oxygen into your body, which will help you save breath, and add the luxury of moving your arms more to emphasise key points.
- Make sure the virtual audience can see your entire upper body, and you have a non distracting background
- Stop using Zoom backgrounds, they’ve been ‘rinsed’ for humour purposes. I’d recommend a wall behind you, your kitchen, or bookcase. Make sure you have the time keeper pinned as well. You have a ‘face’ to present too, and you can easily see a big green, orange or red card.
Competent Communicator – and the award goes to…
This year we have a record number of Competent Communicator awards. A round of applause for: Scott Burgess, Matthew Robertson, Atul Chauhan, Sarah Peacey, Raymond Hill and Yamina Bakiri!
And for Competent Leader Bronze award: Sheldon Dee, Peter Richardson, Chantal Lyons, Margarita Sachkova
Well done to those who reached new Pathways levels: Mara Dumitru, Peter Francis, Greg O’Grady (moved from Level 1 to level 2), Yassine Meziane and Margarita Sachkova (Moved from Level 2 to level 3).
If you have reached a new Pathways level (or any other education award) in 2019/2020 but do not see your name here, contact us, and we’ll make sure to amend our records!
Our club for the very first time has achieved 10 out of 10 Distinguished Club Programme Credits and received the highest level of recognition in the TM world – President’s Distinguished Club.
Your achievements and the Committee’s hard work has paid off well. We are very proud of it and can’t wait to arrange a Zoom party to celebrate!
New committee – Want to lead your club?
As you may know, every Toastmasters club is run by a committee of volunteers from its membership. As we approach the last month of the Toastmasters year (which runs from July to June), it’s time to start thinking about whether you would like to lead your club in the year ahead.
Joining your club’s committee is a fantastic way of gaining and honing your leadership skills and, just like a regular meeting, a Toastmasters committee is a safe and friendly environment in which to do so. There are roles to suit all levels of skills, experience and time commitments and you’ll also have a direct impact on the day-to-day running of your club.
Any role can be taken up by any member of the club for the term July 2020 to June 2021, but we’re especially looking for people to fill the positions of Vice President Membership, co-Vice President Public Relations, Treasurer and Secretary.
If you’d like to find out more about what the different committee roles entail, then feel free to speak to any of the existing members or get in touch via president@bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk.
Club membership – fees and renewals
Club members who were in good standing as of the end of February will not be charged till the end of June. The new committee will update members on fees and renewables in July.
There’s great news for old club members who want to rejoin – join us before the end of June to receive a generous discount on both yearly and six monthly memberships:
- £50 for 6 months instead of £80
- £80 for 12 months instead of £100Talk to our existing committee on how you can join or write to us on president@bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk.
Upcoming dates
Our remaining meetings for this Toastmasters year will be held on the following dates:
- 8th June
- 22nd June
- 13th July
- 27th July
If you’re a member, the Zoom links will be posted on our WhatsApp group. Guests can see the link by indicating their attendance on Meetup.
You can also attend other club meetings across the globe. Here are some of the places to look for online meetings –
UK & Ireland :https://toastmasterclub.org/meetonline.php
Mainland Europe: https://tmclub.eu/meetonline.php (
rest of the world: https://easy-speak.org/meetonline.php
Toastmasters International:- https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
That’s all for this newsletter – hope you enjoyed reading it.
We would love to hear any feedback that you may have and do let us know if you have anything interesting to share or contribute.
Stay safe!
