Written by Elena (edited by Swarajit)

Introduction

With a challenging word of the day “MANTLE” from a visiting Grammarian, guests taking part in the Table Topics section, a relatively new member taking Best Speaker award for her No. 2 Speech and one member preparing to give the Best Man speech at his brother’s wedding, it was another busy meeting at The Clerk & Well pub.

Femi, the Club President, opened the meeting with great enthusiasm and encouraged the audience to get involved in the Toastmasters programme.

The Toastmaster of the evening was past club President Glen, who energised the meeting and revealed goals which participants would like to achieve in the next 4 years by the ‘Rio 2016’ Olympic Games. Glen was supported by Timekeeper Steven and Grammarian Stella, visiting from Northern Lights Speakers.

Prepared speeches

Christopher declared his prime motive in joining Bloomsbury Speakers had been to prepare for the most important speech of his life – the “Best Man Speech” for his little brother’s wedding, which would take place this weekend. (Members often find that Toastmasters is a good platform to practise and enhance speeches that they have to deliver elsewhere.) Chris shared several amusing anecdotes about his brother and their close relationship.

The second speaker was Marielle with her speech No. 2 entitled “The Day I Became a Professional Dancer” in which she told us the story of how she was cast in a music video having had no experience of dancing before. Marielle closed with the advice – Fake it ‘til you make it!

The next speaker, Ahmed, presented his No. 4 speech “An Overview of the Major Underground Station Upgrade Projects”. He familiarised the audience with the project of upgrading Victoria, Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road stations due to quite significantly increased passenger demand by 2018. Ahmed also pointed out the benefits and major challenges of this project and his belief that it would help London to remain the business capital of Europe.

The last speaker was Renars with an advanced speech whose goal was to deliver a talk within the format of a radio talk show. He presented himself as an entrepreneur and founder of “Smart Card Ltd.” and was ‘interviewed’ by the host of the show (fellow member Michael). In his interview Renars told us about the main idea of his business which is placing business cards in dispensers on walls at many different social places so that anyone could take them out.

Speech evaluations

Christopher’s Best Man speech was evaluated by Michael. He started by quoting the phrase which really drew his attention – “this speech is the most important of my life”. He also commended Christopher’s strong introduction, great humour and research but recommended adding some pauses into the speech to get the audience to think a bit more.

Evaluating Marielle’s professional dancer speech, Elena praised originality of the topic and a well-structured speech enhanced with natural body language and pace of delivery. She recommended speaking louder and projecting the voice to cope with challenging noise from the street.

Carrie gave the evaluation of Ahmed’s speech on the Underground upgrade project. She commended Ahmed’s passion about this topic which came across in his body language. However Carrie would have liked to have heard some personal stories.

Ratan evaluated Renars’s radio talk show. The objective of the speech was to prepare for questions you might be asked. Ratan gave his evaluation in his humorous, thorough style and commended the fact that Renars appeared as a very confident speaker with a commanding voice and exceptional knowledge of the subject. Ratan would have liked to have heard Renars answer the questions related to printing of the business cards and their possible effect on environment.

Table Topics

Jo, inspired by “The big book of IF…” (which contains 50,000 questions starting with “If…”) used a sample of questions to help volunteers from the audience exercise their impromptu speaking skills. They were prompted to answer questions such as:

• If you could change one thing in the world right now, what it would be and why?
• If you could hold any athletic record, what it would be and why?
• If you could star any movie in the last fifty years, what would it be and why?

Awards

Closing the meeting, Femi reminded everyone that the Humorous Speech & Table Topics contests will take place on Monday, 10th September at our usual venue, The Clerk & Well, and gave out the awards based on the votes cast during the evening.

The Best Evaluator award was given to Ratan, a Toastmaster for over five years, for evaluating Renars’s advanced speech. The Best Table Topics Speaker award went to relatively new member Saija for her Table Topic about wanting to achieve the world record in synchronised swimming, and the highly-prized Best Speaker award went to Marielle for her professional free-style dancing speech.

The President’s discretional award went to Glen for his brilliant performance in the Toastmaster role.

Next meeting

Our next meeting is on Monday, 20^th August 2012, upstairs at The Clerk and Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5BX.

Introduction

Club President Femi opened the meeting with lots of energy and explained how Toastmasters nurtures the natural speaking ability in everyone. He likened public speaking to ice skating – the only way to get better is to “get on the ice” and start practicing.

The Toastmaster for the evening Jason introduced his theme for the meeting – music. He said he felt that a good speech should be like a good piece of music in that it should move you or otherwise affect you, and had asked each speaker to tell him their favourite song and why.

The timekeeper Ilze (favourite song Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”) explained the importance of keeping to time and started with a quote: “Make sure you always make time to spend with your special people, because otherwise one day you’ll find yourself with lots of time and nobody special to spend it with”.

Grammarian Renars (who had just learned to play “Trouble” by Coldplay) introduced the word of the day “reciprocate” and encouraged all participants to use it. He compared his role to that of a heckler in a comedy club, picking up on things that he didn’t like from the speakers – particularly related to language and grammar – but also highlighting “amazing uses of language”.

Prepared speeches

The first speaker was new member Jasr (favourite song “Al Atlal” – The Ruins), with his Icebreaker speech entitled: “Survivors”. In an honest and touching speech Jasr told the story of an encounter with a woman in a pub (which didn’t go quite how he’d hoped), then neatly transitioned to a discussion of natural history and some of the remarkable species to survive to the current day.

The next speech was from Michael (chosen song “Bring Him Home” from Les Miserables) – a No.2 speech entitled: “Is Cycling A Drug?”. A passionate cyclist himself, Michael gave us a short history of the Tour de France – a race of 2000 miles over 3 weeks with only 2 rest days – from a uniquely murky perspective: that of drug use. He revealed that as far back as 1903 riders were using alcohol to dull the pain of the race and in 1924 two cycling brothers even used cocaine to improve their performance!

The third speaker was AG who told us about how a love of jewellery led her to take a jewellery-making evening class, which means she’s now able to make jewellery of her own for herself, her friends and her family. She took us through the various stages of the process she used for making a piece in the shape of a flower, including design, “annealing” (softening the metal) and “doming” (shaping).

The fourth speaker was by Joe with his No. 8 speech “Looking For My Keys” in which he used visual aids and the concept of keys as a metaphor for finding the tools to unlock the human mind. He explained one of these tools – powerful visualisation – and how it could be used to create the confidence and success that many of us aspire to achieve.

Speech evaluations 

After the break each of the prepared speeches was given a formal evaluation by one of the club members, who gave both commendations and useful recommendations to each speaker.

Evaluating his ice breaker, Ratan commended Jasr for engaging the sympathy of the audience and also vividly setting the scene at the start of his speech. He admitted to feeling some confusion in the main body of the speech but ended by congratulating Jasr on his excellent hand gestures and even gave him a quick tip for talking to women in pubs!

Christopher was our next evaluator, critiquing Michael’s speech about cycling and paying close attention to the project objectives: creating an appropriate outline, having a clear message, and using appropriate transitions. He particularly commended Michael’s use of factual information to support the main message and said he was really looking forward to Michael’s next speech.

Carrie (favourite song “Everything is Everything” by Lauryn Hill) was next up, evaluating AG’s speech about jewellery making. She started by stating that she felt AG had certainly met her speech objectives, particularly that of having a clear purpose, and commended her on giving the entire speech without notes. She recommended making the speech more engaging for people who might not naturally be interested in jewellery by, for instance, bringing a piece of her jewellery in for people to see and also by incorporating more humour into the speech.

Finally, Ahmed (for whom Donald Byrd’s “Dominoes” is a favourite tune) evaluated Joe’s No. 8 speech. He enjoyed Joe’s opening device of the image of a set of keys on the screen which engaged the audience, who wondered where this might lead, and overall he felt that the use of visual aids had complemented the speech. In terms of recommendations, Ahmed advised that standing closer to the computer might make Joe’s transitions slicker.

Table Topics

After the break, the Table Topics (impromptu speaking) session was run by Glen (favourite song “Fluorescent Adolescent” by The Arctic Monkeys) who took as his theme the weather. He felt we should embrace our natural tendency to make small talk about this very topic and push the limits a bit further. He invited various volunteers to speak off-the-cuff for one to two minutes on a number of weather-related topics, including:

• If you could control the weather (like Storm from the X-Men) – what would you do?
• Describe snow to someone who’s never seen it before.
• Explain why you should be the new face of BBC Weather.
• Does every cloud really have a silver lining?

Both members and guests tackled the wide range of topics with great enthusiasm and overall the standard was very high.

After an evaluation of all the topics speakers by regular member Joyanta, Ilze gave her final report as timekeeper. This was followed by Renars’ report as Grammarian – and he turned out to be a real stickler for ‘ums’ and ‘ers’ but also commended good use of language during the meeting.

The General Evaluator Stella from Society Speakers provided useful feedback for all members not yet evaluated, and had a number of commendations for the club as a whole, including the very friendly welcome she received on arrival.

Awards

Closing the meeting, Femi reminded everyone of the forthcoming Humorous Speech and Table Topics contests on 10th September before handing out the awards as voted by the audience.

The best evaluator award went to Ratan for his evaluation of Jasr’s speech. The best Table Topic award went (jointly!) to Renars and Swarajit. And best speaker went to Michael for his speech on drugs and cycling. The President’s award went to Ilze for her fantastic performance as timekeeper.

Next meeting

Our next meeting is on Monday 23rd July 2012, upstairs at The Clerk and Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5BX.