Meeting Report 12 October 2015

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Written by Carrie

Introduction

 

The Perseverance pub kindly hosted us following a last minute venue switch for our regular meeting on Monday 12th October 2015.

 

Since our President was held up en route to the meeting, our Toastmaster for the evening, Henry, stepped in to welcome us with a warm and witty overview of tonight’s agenda.

 

As his theme for the evening, Henry had surveyed our ‘dominant feelings’ on the season of Autumn prior to the meeting, but to catch up on time, he was unable to share results with us, reassuring the audience that he could make use of our emotive responses by using them to write some poetic literature!

 

Functionaries of the day were Sarah, who kept us to time, and Carrie, who as grammarian, introduced us to her word of the day “congruent”.

 

Speeches

 

Fabiano introduced himself to the Bloomsbury gang with his ice breaker entitled “We are our choices”, sharing his entrepreneurial ventures, his major life decisions, and how they have impacted his life.

 

Peter also broke the ice in this extra chilly Toastmasters meeting telling us all about his story to date, dividing his speech up into alliterative chunks which were easy for the audience to digest. We learnt plenty about his favourite ‘places, people and philosophies’.

 

Sheldon entertained us with his speech project number 5, “Emotional Resonance”, which gave us a technical yet highly comedic insight into why music impacts our emotions. With real audio features, he demonstrated the power of music to bring any story to life – even one about washing a pair of pants.

 

Rufina took us into advanced speech territory with an informative and inspiring review of her recent safari in her speech, “Hakuna Matata Holiday”.

 

Just before the congregation hopped off to sample the Perservance bar in a refreshment break, Michelle gave a warm welcome to our guests.

 

Table Topics

 

Our table topics mistress for the evening, Michelle, kicked off part two of the meeting with an impromptu speaking session which focused on the festive delights of this distinctive Autumnal season.

 

Our first impromptu speaker, Robert, was asked to tell us what kind of superhero he would attend a Halloween party as, while Egor was challenged to reveal the gory details of his favourite scary film of all time.

 

Olga told us all about her favourite winter snack, and Paul told us all about his favourite sport as we reflected upon the rugby World Cup mania hitting the country this week.

Ayesha closed our lively table topics session with an amusing and imaginative review of her perfect winter get away.

Our table topics evaluator, Peter Francis, gave a positive and fluent review of all the impromptu speeches we just had seen with some tips for improvement, before our grammarian, Carrie, took to the stage to give her detailed report.  Carrie shared examples of powerful rhetorical devices used throughout the night, whilst reminding us how important is it to use language to appeal to the listener’s emotional brain.

 

Our General Evaluator for the evening, Jonathon Mueller from Russian speakers, finished the meeting with a dynamic, engaging and dare we say, brutally honest, review of everyone who hadn’t been evaluated until now.  He concluded that despite the tardy start due to challenging venue circumstances, the meeting was a great success, with plenty of talent in the room – good job Bloomsbury speakers!

 

Awards

 

The best speaker award went to Peter Richardson, best evaluator award to Peter Francis and best table topic speaker went to our guest, Ayesha.

 

Fabiano and Peter were awarded their ice-breaker ribbons.

 

Next meeting

 

Our next regular meeting is on Monday 26 October 2015 at our normal venue at The Clerk & Well

156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5DU, London

Meeting 24th August 2015

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Svetlana, our Toastmaster for the evening set the theme of Summer and August but as president Helen said, it looked like summer was over by the down pour outside as the Bloomsbury Toastmasters huddled in for this week’s speeches!

Carlos did an excellent Icebreaker speech about being Columbian regaling us with tales of his grandfather’s drinking games.
?Robert talked about the ‘Importance of being Ernest’ – using a love of Oscar Wilde and his fav Wilde play to give us a philosophical speech about how he’s prepping for his job interview and not beating himself up.??Sheldon gave a fab speech (that turned out to be the winning one of the evening) about Confirmation Bias and being careful what you look for, with concluding words; “Be careful what you look for in this world as you’ll probably find it!” gave great food for thought.??The final prepared speech was another insightful topic – Science versus Art – given by Zita. Zita, talked about how we grow up as children and are pigeonholed into arts or science state of mind but invited us to question this traditional school of thought and perhaps free ourselves of the?“fetters of characterisation”??Svetlana’s encouraging summary talked of Intellectual speeches being emotional and inspirational, whilst relaying and reminding us that ‘we all have public speakers inside us.’ Nice.
?It was great to see a number of new faces with lots of guests attending this evening’s Toastmasters, from all over the world, from San Francisco to Australia!

Michelle, Swarajit and Olga gave great evaluations of the prepared speeches, reminding speakers to use the stage more and commending on great use of language.

Paul’s use of ‘Tables’ as the subject matter for Table Topics was in genius, and must have been a first for Bloomsbury! Winning Table Topics speaker was Peter who talked of the most historical table in history being his!
?Carrie won best evaluator by giving a fantastic Table Topics evaluation of all our guest speakers that stepped up and took part
?Timekeeper this week was Sarah; Sarah did a fab job of keeping it brief and being to the point. A real must for all timekeepers!

Emma this week’s Grammarian reported 5 uses of word inertia as well as nice uses of metaphors, colourful, inspiring language. Good anecdotes from guest speakers in table topics??Guest Evaluator’s report was insightful with lots of commendations (nice room and vibe, good guest intros) about Bloomsbury and some recommendations for the club (grammarian should make more recommendations – perhaps for speakers to not repeat words too much)

Helen concluded the meeting with giving out the awards, flagging the roles that are open on the committee and reminding us about the contests and Lynne’s workshop

Next Meeting Monday 14th September 2015 at the Clerk and Well 156 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5DU
Doors open at 6.30pm

Meeting Report for 27 July 2015

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Written by Svetlana

Another energizing rendezvous of like-minded people at Bloomsbury Speakers Toastmasters Club celebrating the charisma – took place on 27 July!
One half-milestone – No.5 – speech and three advanced speeches were on the agenda!

Emma S. surprised us with still another facet of her personality and life of a surfer. We experienced ups and downs of a very spiritual journey through motion pictures, which she created with her speech and body language.

Svetlana R. presented her new speech project as advanced double-interpretive reading of her translation of a humourous short story “About Cat Basia” by Alexey Berezin.

Rufina D. took everybody through a personal experience of wrong choice of Maid of Honour (turned into Maid of Horror) and its consequences and concluded with some valuable advice.

With Helen H. we literally immersed ourselves in the exotic childhood horror tales of West Indies with all the scary ghosts and spirits told with masterful imagery and colourful language.

The whole evening was beautifully summarised by the Grammarian Alefiya from the point of view of the language use and then by our phenomenal last minute serendipity GE Damian Chapman! Normally, we have our GEs booked several months in advance but 27 July was that special day when we were destined to discover Damian.

There were a few more discoveries during the Table Topics session – our guests Peter and Jake’s impromptu answers sounded like very well prepared speeches- both uplifting and insightful. All guests did well giving it a courageous go in standing up and facing the audience.

Our evaluators Robert W., Paul F., Zita M., Swarajit D. and Bronia K. added that special value to the evening providing commendations and recommendations in the form of brilliant speeches.

President Helen H., Toastmaster of the evening Egor S. Timekeeper Peter F., Sergeant and Arms Zita M. and our Table Topics Master Tracey A. produced a wonderful and unique evening of intellectual and emotional entertainment and personal growth for all of us.

Best speech award was voted in favour of Helen H. Best evaluator award went to Paul F. Best table topic award went to our guest Jake.

Next meeting

Our next regular meeting is on Monday, 10th of August upstairs at The Clerk and Well, 156 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm.

 

Meeting Report for 22 June 2015

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Written by Svetlana

Introduction

Bloomsbury Speakers Club hosted its regular meeting on Monday 22th June 2015 with an enthusiastic opening from President-in-Waiting Helen!

Prepared Speeches

After the Introduction, Helen handed the meeting over to the Toastmaster of the Evening, Hari, who introduced the theme of the day, which words of wisdom we would give to the dear ones as a farewell. A very dramatic question was handled mainly with humour and wit. 

Functionaries of the day were: Michelle, the Timekeeper, and Sarah, the Grammarian, who introduced the word of the day “audacious”.

There were four prepared speeches on the agenda. The first speaker was Paul who delivered his No. 1 Icebreaker Speech, entitled “Father’s Day”, which was a great story about two generations of fathers – his own father and the kind of father he was to his sons. While being a personal story with some dramatic moments, it also had lots of humour and poetry intertwined. Zita delivered her No. 2 speech project entitled “Disconnected in the Connected World” and Sheldon’s No. 3 speech “Coping with Semantic Flux” were both quite educational and surprised us with rich language and paradoxes. Alefiyah’s Speech No. 4 The Cultural Identity of a BBCD – British Born Confused Desi” was packed with quite exotic blend of episodes and details from her rich background and family stories and facts and prove that there is no easy answer to a simple question such as “Where are you originally from?”.

We had warmly hosted guest introductions from Swarajit and thorough evaluations from Tracey, Peter, Bronia, and Svetlana.

Table topics

The table topics session was conducted by Rufina who asked well thought questions, which revealed some ingenuity we have in the club. In particular, Swarajit, as a UN peace keeper, would introduce a ceremonial cake eating as a peace making procedure between leaders of countries at war. Paolo’s advice to disadvantaged teenagers would be to develop their personalities, gain education and not to be after easy money. Peter R.’s parting advice to his daughter who is getting married, would be to remain true to herself. The question “Your son/best friend who is insistent on moving to Australia,  what will be your words of wisdom to him?” was answered by India. The question “You work for a charity that deals with offenders in prison. Your assignment is to impact words of wisdom to these offenders. What would you say to them?” went to Harriet. “If you had to part with all your belongings except one, which one item would it be & why?” was answered by Sarah-Anne, who shared a heart-felt story from her life. “The London black cab drivers are demonstrating again. After your recent incident of swearing at a black cab driver blasted all over the news you still have to give a speech to these drivers as the Mayor of London. What would you say?” was bravely handled by Peter F.  Melanie shared with us one of her favorite quotes  of all times & why it was her favourite.

Egor gave a concise and informative evaluation for topics speakers with some useful analysis and tips for improvement.

Grammarian Sarah’s report was quite substantive.

Andy provided an excellent and thorough general evaluation of the evening with recommendations to all functionaries of the evening and evaluators who were not evaluated.

Awards

Icebreaker ribbon has handed to Paul; best speaker award was handed to Zita; best evaluator award went to Tracey, and best impromptu speech award went to Sarah Ann!

Next meeting

Our next regular meeting is on Monday, 13th of July upstairs at The Clerk and Well, 156 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm. 

Meeting Report for 30 March

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Written by Svetlana

Introduction

Bloomsbury Speakers Club hosted its regular meeting on Monday 30th March 2015 with an enthusiastic opening from President Jo.

Prepared Speeches

After the Introduction, Jo handed the meeting over to the Toastmaster of the Evening, Peter L., who introduced the theme of the day jokes and pranks we like or we are good at in view of the upcoming 1 April Fool’s Day  . 

Femi introduced the functionaries of the day: Sarah the Timekeeper and Tracey, the Grammarian, introduced the word of the day “confounded”; she encouraged the use of rhetorical devices and reduce the amount of filler words.

There were four prepared speeches on the agenda. The first speaker was Conor who delivered a quite entertaining and informative No. 1 Icebreaker Speech, entitled “It’s Easy, Right?” devoted to his mixed experiences of public speaking, which he finalised encouraging us to open up topics discouraged from Toastmasters, such as politics, religion and sex.

Emma delivered her No.3 speech entitled “Women in Technology” – started off with a quiz to check our knowledge of famous names just to show us how biased we are as we could hardly name any women in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Emma organised her speech as past: Ada Lovelace, first computer programmer,  Daphne Oram, creator of electronic sounds; present – Lauren Melanie, lead engineer of iPhone, Jess Lee, Google Maps creator; and future of technology – Gloria, the 8 year old London STEM school student, the code cracker. Emma expressed her wish that the future will not be about gender, but about people in technology.

Flavia gave her International Contest speech entitled “The Script” in which she related a dramatic personal story of a relationship where her own faith and support from close friends and family brought her to the idea that if the script of your life is not working for you change it rather than breaking yourself. 

We had warmly hosted guest introductions from Michelle and well-balanced and well-structured thorough evaluations from Egor, Axel, and Bronia.

Table topics

The table topics session was conducted by Alefiyah, who offered the impromptu speakers a variety of questions.

“In life you often come across revelations, or epiphanies, which change our course of life. Which epiphany would you rather be?” went to Swarajit, who chose to be Darwin’s Theory.

“If you were a television what would your day be like?” went to Milo, who assumed the role quite easily and described several different highlights of being a TV set in a hotel or office foyer, at old persons’ home, at average family home, and gave us more than one chance to have a hearty laugh.

“If you were a house what kind of house would you like to be?” went to Olga who among so many choices chose to be a house for positive and caring people.

“If you were a celebrity what would you be famous for and why?” went to Sean, who said he would be David Beckham, because he, as an amateur football player is kicked all the time whether he is playing well or not. So, it would be good to enjoy fame and money while having that.

“If you were a political party what would be your philosophy?” went to Helen who said all current parties don’t provide what they are promising and she would be a party, which would promise anything voters want to vote for just to be elected.

“If you were car what kind of car would you be?” went to Axel who being originally from Sweden, would be a stylish car of Ferrari or Porsche or Aston Martin provided he gets his driving licence later this year.

Carrie gave an impressively thorough and informative evaluation for each of the topics speakers, which was well articulated and with good humour and language throughout.

Grammarian Tracey’s report was accepted with great attention as she evaluated speakers from the point of view of English language usage.

Florian provided an excellent and upbeat general evaluation of the evening providing recommendations to all functionaries of the evening and evaluators who were not evaluated.

Awards

Icebreaker ribbon has handed to Conor; best speaker award was handed to Flavia; best evaluator award went to Carrie; and best impromptu speech award went to Milo!

Next meeting

Our next regular meeting is on Monday, 13th of April upstairs at The Clerk and Well, 156 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm.