Meeting Report for 24 October 2011

/in /by

Written by Elena Fanaberova (edited by Glen Long)

Introduction

The meeting was opened by Club President Glen Long who welcomed the new guests and gave an overview of Toastmasters, likening the ten speech communication programme to going to the gym – you need to keep “increasing the weights” to see progress.

The Toastmaster of this evening was a very experienced speaker and past president Nazia Soon, assisted by the Harkmaster Hari Kalymnios and the Timekeeper Elena Fanaberova, while Adam Horne led the Guest Introductions.

In fact Hari was particularly busy this evening playing three roles: Harkmaster, giving an educational speech about “Mentoring” prior to the prepared speeches and as the evaluator of one of the speakers – Neil Ward.

Prepared speeches

It is always a great pleasure for the club to have an Ice Breaker speech during a meeting and this evening, Jo Higham, who has been a member for only one month, gave hers. It’s an important step in the Toastmaster’s programme and in her very first speech entitled “Less Is More” she quoted “the things you own end up owning you” from the film Fight Club, which encapsulated her own personal philosophy.

The second speaker was Neil Ward, who delivered his No. 2 speech “A Winning Mindset”. In his very clear and memorable speech Neil gave us the mnemonic ABC for success: action, belief in yourself and commitment.

The last speaker was Joe Lake, who has really thrown himself into Toastmasters since joining and is already on his fourth speaking project with his speech “Manage It”. In this speech Joe described different types of managers and explained how to be a good manager by using three rules: “neighbourhood mentality”, “make it personal” and “learn from everyone and everything”.

Speech evaluations

Evaluation is a crucial part of our meetings for speakers because they are able to receive recommendations for further improvements. It is also a good opportunity for evaluators to enhance their critical and communication skills.

The first evaluator Nazia evaluated Jo’s impressive Ice Breaker speech. Nazia said that she heard a quote, a joke and a question all in the beginning of the speech which engaged the audience very effectively. Also Nazia observed that Jo was very relaxed and used very effective facial expressions. She gave only one recommendation regarding the Jo’s stance.

The next evaluator Hari evaluated Neil’s memorable speech. He commended Neil for using a question that hooked the audience in the opening and also his ABC approach that gave the speech a clear structure and made it more easily understandable. However, Hari would have liked to have heard smoother transitions between the three distinct sections.

The last evaluator Glen evaluated Joe’s speech. Glen commented that he heard good use of language and of rhetorical devices as required by the objectives of the speech. Also he very much liked Joe’s relaxed and affable style. The main recommendation from Glen was that he would like to have even more rhetorical devices to make the points more memorable, e.g. use of repetition.

Table Topics

Participating in Table Topics (impromptu speaking) is great practice for new members and for experienced ones as well as brave guest volunteers.

The Topics Master of the evening was Swarajit Das, the Club Treasurer. Swarajit prepared a Table Topics session with a theme that is relevant for many people at the moment – job interviews. His questions were taken from real interviews and included:

  • In an ideal world, what would be your dream job?
  • What is your greatest achievement?
  • Sell me this pen.
  • Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
  • What is your biggest personal strength?
  • Describe the worst job you have ever had.

Six people tackled one of Swarajit’s questions – including several guests – and got some great experience of thinking on their feet.

Club secretary Kate Osborne was the Table Topics evaluator this evening and praised the choice of topics and gave the participants some encouraging recommendations.

Our General Evaluator was Philip Landergan, who is a member of Bromley Speakers club. Philip evaluated all the meeting participants who were left to be evaluated and gave a very useful outside perspective on our club with some very helpful recommendations.

Awards

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

The Best Evaluator award went to Kate for her Table Topics evaluation, the Best Table Topics speaker award went to guest Brendan who successfully “sold” Swarajit his own pen and the “highly coveted” Best Speaker award went to Jo for her speech, who also got a certificate for successfully completing her Icebreaker speech – an important landmark for any Toastmaster.

Finally the President’s discretional award went to the returning guest Richard for his humorous Table Topic.

Next meeting

Our next meeting is on Monday 14th November at The Rugby Tavern.

And make sure you put Monday 12th December in your diary as well – it’s our Christmas-themed meeting and we’ve already got lots of fun ideas for seasonal speaking!

Meeting Report for 10 October 2011

/1 Comment/in /by

By Elena Fanaberova. (Edited by Swarajit Das).

Introductions

The meeting was opened by the club’s Past President, and acting President for the evening, Nazia Soon. In her very welcoming introduction Nazia clearly explained, for the benefit of our guests, the organization of the worldwide Toastmasters family and how to become a competent speaker and leader by following the first two Toastmaster’s manuals.

Nazia then handed the meeting over to the evening’s Toastmaster and club secretary Kate Osborne, who encouraged an energetic meeting. Kate briefly explained the agenda before introducing the theme for the meeting – favourite leaders – and explained that she would be introducing each speaker and functionary with the answer they’d given beforehand. Kate revealed that her own favourite leader is London mayor Boris Johnson.

Kate then introduced the evening’s Timekeeper, Elena Fanaberova (whose favourite leader is Peter the Great), and Harkmaster Joe Lake.

Prepared speeches

This evening there were four prepared speeches from across the whole range of Toastmasters projects: one Ice Breaker speech, two No. 5 speeches (Your Body Speaks) and one Advanced Speech.

The first speaker was AG with her fascinating and professionally-delivered Ice Breaker speech. She told us that her greatest passion is travelling which is closely linked with her other interests such as human history and World War II, as well as cooking and tasting new food.

The next speaker was Hari Kalymnios, whose favourite leader is Winston Churchill. In his No. 5 speech “Gimme A Break!” Hari told us, in a very expressive way, a personal story about a terrible event on holiday in Austria when he broke his shoulder and had to go through a lengthy and painful recovery, which taught him that with hard work, discipline and help from others, one can cope with any challenge.

The third speaker was Joyanta Raksmith, whose favourite leader is the late Steve Jobs. In his No. 5 speech entitled “Greatest Product on Earth” Joyanta discussed specific features of some very popular technology products such as the iPad and Facebook, and yet tried to prove the point that the greatest product on earth is Coca Cola.

The last prepared speaker was Jennifer Zou with her Advanced Speech entitled “Is packaging important to you?”. Jennifer told us a very emotive but wise story about a young man who not only missed a desired gift from his father because it was packaged in a way that he didn’t expect, but even broke up his relationship with his father because of it.

Speech evaluations

After a short break, Kate opened the evaluations part of the meeting. The first evaluator was Femi Asaolu, evaluating AG’s maiden speech.

Femi reminded us that the objective of the Ice Breaker speech is to discover speaking skills that the speaker already has. He said he had heard a very well presented story and that AG already had an outstanding storytelling ability which he likened to reading a novel.

The next evaluator, Henry Playfoot, whose favourite leaders are Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, evaluated Hari’s speech. Henry commented that Hari demonstrated body language and eye contact that were both entirely congruent with his speech and achieved the objectives of the No. 5 speech. There was only one recommendation for Hari: to use more facial expressions.

The third evaluator, Todd Wade, whose favourite leader is also Steve Jobs, evaluated Joyanta’s speech about Coca Cola. He praised the precise, clever and persuasive arguments Joyanta used to back up his point of view but noticed that the introduction was a little bit longer than necessary and suggested speaking without notes.

The last evaluator, Nazia Soon, whose favourite leader is Richard Branson, evaluated Jennifer’s advanced speech. She said that Jennifer’s story had been very emotional and had moved everyone in the audience and so the main objective of this speech was achieved very well. Nazia recommended that Jennifer project her voice a bit more to make it easier for everyone in the audience to hear.

Table Topics

The ad hoc speeches part of the meeting was opened by Kate introducing the evening’s Topics Master, Hari Kalymnios, who opened by describing his own experience of having to make an impromptu speech at a wedding.

The first Table Topic speaker, Henry Playfoot, was given a topic called “A leader of Greece” and was required to convince the population of the country that it is necessary to undertake unpopular measures to recover from the debt crisis.

The second speaker, Simon – one of the evening’s guests – received the topic “A leader of an island” and had to convince one of its inhabitants to jump into a volcano to save the rest of the population.

The third speaker was another guest, John, who was tasked with picking any three leaders to invite to dinner and explain his reasons.

The last speaker, Layla (yet another guest!), was asked to predict who out of two leaders including Nelson Mandela would win in a street fight and why!

The Table Topics evaluator Swarajit Das commented that speakers had been given very difficult topics but used humour, good structure and effective tactics in their answers. He also gave some general recommendations about eye contact and stage position which were useful for all.

After Swarajit’s evaluations, Harkmaster Joe Lake tested the attendees’ listening skills by posing questions relating to what they had heard throughout the evening. As usual correct answers were rewarded with sweets!

Awards

After an insightful general evaluation by experienced speaker (and member of TubeTalk) Ola Aralepo, Nazia brought the meeting to a close by giving out the awards based on votes cast during the evening.

The Best Evaluator award went to Femi, the Best Table Topic speaker award went to guest Simon and the highly-coveted Best Speaker award to Jennifer. AG also received a certificate for successfully completing her Ice Breaker speech – an important landmark for any Toastmaster.

Next meeting

Our next meeting is on Monday 24th October 2011 at The Rugby Tavern.

The London Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest Finals (including four great educational workshops) are happening this Saturday 15th October.

Find out more and book tickets at:

divisionb.eventbrite.com

Meeting Report for 26 September 2011

/in /by

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

/in /by

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.

Meeting Report for 22 August 2011

/in /by

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.