Written by Svetlana

Introduction

Our President Swarajit opened the meeting by giving a concise description of what Toastmasters is about and how it can help build confidence in public speaking and leadership skills. He went on to speak about Bloomsbury Speakers itself and its executive committee, which includes, among others, the Vice President Education Jo, Vice President Public Relations Rufina and the club’s Treasurer Ahmed and is now planning for its succession in June.

After that, Swarajit introduced the evening’s Toastmaster Ratan who has been with Bloomsbury Speakers since its creation.

Ratan gave a brief overview of the Toastmasters competent communication programme before running through the agenda for the meeting. His theme of the day was “Why I joined Toastmasters” which he’d put as a question to all the evening’s participants. His own reason for joining Toastmasters was to gain confidence with public speaking, and it had also helped him a lot in his professional and social life.

Ratan then introduced the functionaries of the meeting who would assist him that evening:

• Svetlana, the Timekeeper [she said she was at the start of a new career in London and polishing her public speech skills and her goal is to balance the fear and excitement of her new life.]. She explained the format of the meeting agenda and the use of the “traffic lights” to signal timings to the speakers, and that one of the skills to be practiced in speech training was that of expressing a thought within a specific time.
• Kate, the Harkmaster [her reason for joining Toastmasters was to improve her confidence and speaking in groups]. Kate explained her role and encouraged the audience to listen to the speakers carefully as she would check their attention and memory in a quiz at the end and reward the correct answers with chocolate incentives!

Prepared speeches

With an Icebreaker speech entitled “Chance and Destiny: A Little Case Study” Egor [who wants to become a better all-round communicator and story teller;] introduced himself to the club. We all feel a need to be in control of our lives, but it is mostly chance that changes and shapes the human destiny, Egor explained. Many people born in the former Soviet Union experienced unfathomable changes in their life situations. Others had encounters that affected their private lives in unexpected ways. Egor shared his story of how he ended up in the UK pretty much by accident. “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about you plans” – pretty much sums up his dense and personal speech.

The second speaker, Tracey, used her No. 2 speech “The Introvert Advantage” to share with the audience the main message of the topic: that introversion can be beneficial. She cited some interesting research which showed that introverted people differ from so-called “extraverts” in that they recharge themselves from within, while extraverts do so from the people they communicate with. Introverts spend more time reflecting and are capable of high level of concentration, which enables them to have deeper understanding of things; they prefer one-to-one communication. These were features that underlined the difference between introverts and extraverts.

Our third speaker was Carrie who gave her No. 6 speech “An Alternative Option” and encouraged the audience to become entrepreneurs. After giving a short overview of the tremendous business successes of the McDonald brothers and KFC founder Colonel Sanders who started from scratch or even from initial failures, Carrie shared her 5 points of advice distilled from entrepreneurial experiences: 1. Have an idea; identify a need; find a solution; develop a credible product. 2. Create a product or service which you absolutely love. 3. Network, learn from people, use shortcuts. 4. Learn to love your failures because with each step you get closer to success. 5. Have faith. She concluded by sharing her business idea of creating personal development services similar to Toastmasters.

Our fourth speaker Henry gave his No. 10 speech entitled “Live Ferociously” starting off with a quote from Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. He shared a very emotional as well as intellectual and concise review of his own life so far, taking us through the milestones and turning points when he made decisions, such as leaving a comfortable and prestigious job at the BBC to become an entrepreneur. And now too, he was at the point where he had to decide which definition of success would be more suitable to his values and would give him a feeling of success and deep inner satisfaction. He shared that his set of attributes would include being incurably curious, interested in the world, courageous, open to new ideas and people, not to conforming to stereotypes, being passionate about what he did and possessing integrity. He demonstrated an exercise with a string, which revealed to everyone that, in fact, even a long life is much shorter than we assume and it is worth living ferociously, living it for real, without wasting a minute.

Evaluations

Bronia evaluated Egor’s Icebreaker speech and commended him for being brave and able to connect with the audience without fear of being vulnerable. Egor had a good balance of humour, eye-contact and movement on the stage. Her recommendation was to train to project his voice. Bronia praised Egor for a level of poetry, which was probably the influence of Russian literature, a skill which should be enhanced.

Damien evaluated Tracey’s No. 2 speech, pointing out that it was convincing, had a good strategy and effective use of questions, which helped her organise her speech. She managed to link the main messages of the speech to herself, which made her speech very clear and relatable to the audience. As a recommendation, Damien advised to use cards instead of notes and to concentrate on deeper breathing to cope with nervousness. Tracey had a clear stable voice, good eye contact and confidence.

Peter evaluated Carrie’s No. 6 speech with a number of commendations, such as her presence, poise and strength of voice. In fact, she made her audience listen to her, which was a great skill in itself. Her speech had structure, the body of the speech contained instructions and reflections on what she wanted to do and her voice changed. The instructional part of her speech was clear with the right pitch and good articulation and, overall, Peter felt the speech was inspiring and he wished her good luck with her aspirations.

Swarajit evaluated Henry’s No. 10 speech, which was a milestone in competent communication programme. Henry exuded confidence from start as he opened his speech with a quote from Socrates and launched into several personal example. The trick with a string was a good use of visual aid in getting his message across. His arm gestures were very effective too. The only recommendation concerned Henry’s stage position as he was too rooted in one place while occasionally shifting his weight between his legs. He could have probably done better if he either had a more solid pose or walked around the stage. The interaction with the audience was very good.

Table Topics

The table topics (impromptu speeches) section was chaired by Ahmed who explained the “rules of the game” as being able to think on your feet and produce a speech with a beginning, middle and end. He asked the table topic speakers various questions, which they never heard before.

The first question went to guest Peter: which role would he choose and why if he were to auditioned for an acting role? Peter said he would choose Superman, because it would hopefully help him acquire some of his skills and make his life more efficient and effective and more super.

David answered the question “what was the single funniest scene in the films you have seen?” Although all comedy films escaped his mind in the beginning, he resorted to the audience for ideas and nonetheless managed to entertain everybody.

James discussed the question, “How would you convince the government to give more money to the film industry?” He said it was difficult to convince governments to give money for anything, although films are worth funding. The example of that is French film industry, which is funded by the government. French films are known everywhere and possess the unique flavour and keep the idea of French-ness while the only English film funded by the government is “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. We need more films, which could deliver the idea of Englishness to the world much better than the image of Hugh Grant drinking tea, James concluded.

Rory had the question, “Why are X Factor and The Voice bad for the music industry?” Rory said that X Factor was a horrendous charade and not much about music anyway. The Voice, in his opinion, was a more interesting concept as contestants are judged by the voice and not appearances.

Nate had to answer the question “Which film villain is the worst ever?” he managed to mention quite a few of them off the cuff. Then, he asked his own question, “Why is being a villain such a bad thing?” He answered that maybe to be a villain is a good thing as the villain is integral to any story – and if the villain is not very good then the film or the plot is not that good either. Thus, the worst villain is not bad at all!

Robert’s topic was “worst film you’ve ever seen”. His answer was it was a film which he had to watch together with his little sister, who loved fairy tales, while he, in contrast, loved horror films. That particular film, although it had a dragon in it, was still the worst film he had watched in a decade.

Tracey’s question was about “music on CDs vs MP3”. She said MP3 music was much handier to deal with, but she was sorry for the authors who were losing money because free or very cheap downloading was available and people were not buying CDs these days as they used to in the past.

Jo evaluated the topics session by commending all who took part for rising to the challenge, being very natural, delivering with good energy and humour with the general recommendations to use more body language and use the stage more.

Awards

After Harkmaster Kate had done a quick quiz with chocolate rewards, Swarajit brought the meeting to a close by handing out the awards:

• The president’s award went to Svetlana as the evening’s Timekeeper and report writer
• Best evaluator went to Jo
• Best table topic went to Nate
• Best speaker went to Henry

Next meeting

Our next regular meeting will be held on Monday, 14^th April upstairs at The Clerk & Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm.

This Friday, 4^th April (7pm onwards) our member Janet will be competing in the Division L International Speech contest final at the City Temple Conference Centre, Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2DE. Please go along and show your support!

Introductions

Our Vice President for Education Jo – standing in for President Swarajit – opened the meeting by introducing this special International Women’s Day meeting. She told us that International Women’s Day had been celebrated for over 100 years although (shockingly!) Toastmasters did not admit women until 1973.

Jo then introduced past President Nazia, who was the evening’s Toastmaster. Nazia gave a brief overview of the Toastmasters communication programme before running through the agenda for the meeting. She introduced her theme of “inspirational women”, having asked all participants who their favourite woman was, and revealed her own inspiration as Cleopatra. She then introduced the first of her supporting functionaries, the Timekeeper.

Ash (most inspiring woman: her Mum) explained the role of the Timekeeper and said although it was sometimes said that a woman’s prerogative was to be late, it wasn’t true in Toastmasters and she encouraged all the speakers to keep to time.

Nazia then introduced Rebecca (most inspirational woman: her sister), the Harkmaster for the evening. Rebecca opened with a quote from Winston Churchill: “It takes courage to speak, but it also takes courage to sit down and listen”. She explained her role which was to encourage the audience to listen by offering “chocolatey bribes” at the end of the meeting for those who could answer her questions about the speeches.

Prepared Speeches

The first speech “Why Is Yawning Contagious?” was a No. 2 speech by Sarah (most inspiring woman: Marilyn Monroe). We learned that all vertebrates yawn and a number of theories exist about why: a need for more oxygen, a way of waking up if you’re tired or a “brain cooling mechanism”. We also learned that dogs “catch” yawns but cats don’t, and that one of the most widely accepted theories about yawning is that it’s linked to empathy.

The second speaker was Bronia (most inspirational woman: Robin Wright in House of Cards) with a No. 8 speech entitled “In This Together”. She told us she was interested in the discrepancy between the increasingly prominent role of women in society and the large number of negative (and highly sexualised) stereotypes. To find an answer to this conundrum she decided to dig into the male psyche and concluded that men and women need to fight together – not against each other.

The third speaker was Rufina (most inspirational woman: Hilary Clinton) with a No. 9 speech “Hear My Plea”. She opened with a quote: “It is hard to be a woman. You have to think like a man, act like a lady, look like a young girl, and work like a horse”. Despite much progress for women, she told us there are still many injustices and one particularly tough issue is female genital mutilation. Rufina gave some shocking statistics about this barbaric practice – which also happens in this country – and urged us to sign a government petition to act against it beyond current measures.

Kate (most inspirational woman: Supergirl) was the final speaker, delivering a project from the advanced storytelling manual entitled “Bored Brenda”. She told her story about Brenda, a young girl who grew up on a housing estate in Swansea who accidentally released a genie from a discarded teapot. We heard about Brenda’s various wishes: to become a pop star, to be a crime-fighting superhero in New York, to become the first astronaut on Mars, to be captain of a pirate ship called The Black Parrot. Brenda was soon bored by each of her wishes but learned to find contentment at home.

Evaluations

Femi evaluated Sarah’s speech about contagious yawning. He commended the way she had opened with a question and liked the way that she’d made a potentially dry subject interesting and in places even hilarious. He said he would have liked Sarah to yawn at the start of her speech to test the theory of yawn contagiousness.

Samuel was tasked with evaluating Bronia’s No. 8 speech. He commended a strong opening, good eye contact and body language, and great use of humour. He felt she’d definitely met her speech objectives through her adept use of visual aids.

Joe (most inspiring woman: his first tennis teacher) evaluated Rufina’s persuasive speech about genital mutilation. He felt she spoke in a very mature and composed way but still managed to evoke much emotion in the room. He recommended using the audience’s emotion in support of the cause by bringing out a physical petition for people to sign.

Hari (most inspiring woman: his girlfriend!) evaluated Kate’s storytelling speech. He felt the opening of her story created a great hook to draw us into her world and that Kate’s actions really animated her story. He recommended a little more vocal characterisation for the main characters and maintaining the actions throughout.

Table Topics

Paula was the Table Topicsmaster (most inspirational woman: Dame Kelly Holmes) and introduced her topic of – inspiring women!

• Glen was asked to give Florence Nightingale an update on the NHS – he told her she would be impressed by the latest superbugs.
• Swarajit was invited to comment on the current state of fashion for Stella McCartney and Victoria Beckham – he decided it was for them to give an account to him!
• Faith-Rose was invited by Michelle Obama to speak at the White House about a topic of importance – she chose a sense of identity.
• Svetlana was interviewed for Jackie Collins’ next spicy (Toastmasters-themed!) novel – she cleverly side-stepped the question to talk about a process for solving conflicts without wars.
• Rosa Parks risked her life for a cause. Manish was asked what he would stand for in his life – he said good education for all.
• Lady Godiva protested taxes by riding through Coventry naked. Elliot was asked how he would protest – he decided to lead a naked march into Soho with everyone in the room.

Henry (most inspiring women: his wife and three daughters) was the Table Topics Evaluator and opened with a personal plea for people to challenge casual sexism in everyday life. Having firmly established his feminist credentials, Henry went on to give a very thorough and entertaining assessment of the six topics speakers.

Closing and Awards

Atul (from Phoenix Speakers) was the General Evaluator and gave his assessment of all those participants who’d not previously been evaluated and also presented some great feedback for the club as a whole.

The acting president Jo handed out the awards based on the audience votes:

• Best Table Topic Speaker was awarded to Glen
• Best Evaluator was awarded to Henry
• Best Prepared Speech was awarded to Kate

The (acting) President’s discretionary award went to Rufina for her idea of a Women’s Day meeting.

Next Meeting

Our next meeting is the club’s International Speech and Evaluation Contest on Monday, 17th March 2014 in the normal venue: upstairs at the Clerk & Well, 156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5DU.

The next regular meeting is Monday 24th March 2014 in the same venue.