Author: London Victorians

From Down Under to Front Leader

Post author By London Victorians
Post date February 6, 2018

Fahad – the stand in presedent – this is becoming a habit now, talked about the importance of using and following the manuals from Toastmasters International. Paul MCoy from down under in Australia was the toastmaster taking charge of everything that moves within the room, off course no shyness shown, instead courage, humour and leadership.

Fahad stand in president, use these 2 manuals

Paul spoke of a great night of 2 speeches, evaluations and impromptu speeches.
His first speech in Austerial down under was delivered under harsh weather conditions of 40 degress heat and to 8 people, “My first speech, my heart was pounding” but off course later on relaxed with the club London Victorians, what a journey of courage well done Paul.

Thomas: When losing your mobile drink coffee

Thomas sprung up on stage like mounting on a horse and announced that “My role is feed you candies, your role is to gain those candies by carefully listening” to every single one that comes up on stage tonight. Fair enough Thomas. By the way they call chocolate candies over there in Canada.

Joe Higgins: I am your Town Planning Officer

Joe I am your Town Planning Officer, O WOW! I was looking for you Joe. Planning is a service to society where planners decide how best to use the land we have. Joe talked about how her researches what we are lacking in our towns to help him decide granting yet a new chicken shop in south London or not. We are told that town planning policies are incredibly vague and they are open for interpretations. jow talked about how he spends time negotiating with various people trying to find common grounds and he introduced the concept of BANANAS (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
Joe was trying to bridge the knowledge gap between the public perception and the actual work of the planning officer recommending to read the Draft London Plan which is only 500 pages for the introduction part, sure Joe sent it through.

One million Australians use Oral-B switched today was the opening, just because something is popular doesn’t make it worthwhile, so what are the popular methods of distractions Mathew?

1-Ad hominem is Latin meaning “against the man”, the American recent presidential elections was used as an example of personal attacked between candidates. 2-Arguments from ignorance and just because we can’t prove X it does’t mean that X is not true. 3-The straw-man argument and what if we wanted to improve prisons does that mean turning jails into holiday camps? 4-The Red Herring a bad smelling fish used to distract dogs.

Mohammed evaluating Joe’s speech which was entitled “What my Mum thinks I do, what society thinks I do, what I think I do, what I actually do”, Joe took us into his world of planning officer using great descriptive language of “wilderness of planning” and “bridging the knowledge gap”.

Fahad described the second speech as “A fantastic speech” commanding the stage with confident stance, voice projection. Good summary is an advanced skill shown by Mathew.

The meeting was warm we enjoyed the comedy presented by our table topics speakers who we all love for their courage, innovation and leadership in stretching themselves to stand up and share their thoughts, feelings and just do it. Paul’s leading as a Toastmaster showed confidence and execution and joy.

Past meetings

What Invention Would You Want To See

Post author By London Victorians
Post date February 3, 2018

Date
Aug 22

Location
London

Speaker
Jonathan

Tension was building up as people filled the room for Toastmasters at London Victorians, 30th January. Words of encouragement peppered around as new connections formed between members and guests. What’s going to happen? Am I in the right place? Do I really want to be here? Questions flitted through guests minds as they sat nearer the back of the room.

Joe getting his membership from Fahad the standing in president

It was Joe Thomas’s first time as Toastmaster. He paced & smirked at the front of the room. A natural entertainer anticipated his approaching experience.

Mohammed Salih Caesarean Operations Adventures

First section
Fahad, a master of inclusion, asked people to introduce themselves – a smart way to break down barriers. Joe’s time travel story was a hit, laughter followed. Are we at a comedy show? Joe put everyone at ease and brought the timekeeper (Anna), grammarian (Siddharth) and meeting reporter (Andy) to light. Each performing their own delivery to inform guest of their purpose. Speech one, Mohammed’s passionate delivery set the bar. Speaking of real life experiences whilst educating and inspiring the audience. 6 babies! The man’s got super sperm and his wife’s a heroine. Alex, the second speaker, started with a bold statement telling us to forget inspiration, take action! Practical tips sprinkled with compassion brought us closer to his speech intention. Vibesan kept the audience on the edge of their seats. Will Vibeson break free of his stutter to maintain s-speaking fluency? Yes indeed. Vibesan flowed through the sales role play, winning the crowd over with his smile & determination to deliver. Solid evaluations from Matthew, Thomas and Ahmed. Complex literation, smooth deliveries. Educational tone from Thomas and soft encouragement from Ahmed. Susanne welcomed the guests creating new energy in the room.

Final section
If only we’d had a trumpet to announce in the table topics. May the knights stand ready for battle! Sara added the twist of cards – truth or lie . Ooo I heard the crowd groan. Anticipation kicked in as the first name was read out. People navigated through the twists and turns. Emotions of uncertainty flared before coming out on top. Laughter and satisfaction ensued. Well done everyone. New skills, new awareness, new challenges and imprinted memories never to be forgotten.

Guests introducing themselves	Guests introducing themselves
Our General Evaluator Jamie Hamer	Vibesan Illampooranan speaking about the iWatch and trying to sell it to Andy
Best Evaluator Award: Matthew Noble	Best Speaker Award: Alex Liberatore
Andy Turner doing a table topic	..
…	…

Workshop

Workshop: Hoopla Improv Course

Post author By London Victorians
Post date January 27, 2018

Speech Improvisation or “improv” for short is about working together as a team with other improvisers to spontaneously create group stories, scenes & sketches to maximise impact of speakers.

Best courses for people new to improv are the Beginners Improv Courses.

Timing ? for 8 weeks starting in January

Mondays
Tuesdays
Wednesday
Thursdays

Venues?

London Bridge
Liverpool Street
Brick Lane
King’s Cross

Also on offer are one day introductions to improv

Startup with these references

Start today and become a dynamic speaker Book Hoopla Improv Course

For more details, contact

Steve Roe
Director
Hoopla
Email: hooplaimpro@gmail.com
Facebook: /HooplaImpro
Twitter: @HooplaImpro
Phone: 07976975348
www.hooplaimpro.com

Past meetings

A Night of Story Telling

Post author By London Victorians
Post date January 24, 2018

Stories are fundamental parts of our lives, we relate to them, learn from them and live by them.

Our standing in president was Mohammed, he took us back 40 years ago to grade 1 primary school, where his teacher Madeeha (Praiser in Arabic) praised his performance in tests by saying “Mohammed I gave you 10 out of 10, if I could give you more I would give you 11 out of 10” This is how positive words build us and we remember them for a long time. Same in Toastmasters, we build each other and encourage each other to keep improving. We all have inside each one of us a story, a message a song that is wanting to come out to the world.

Isabelle, Toastmaster talked about the power of story and how her interest in the refugee crises has given her the opportunity to visit camps in Turkey. Stories convince us and many times motivate us into action. Watch the clip here.

Sara, Time Keeper talking about her role and the use of coloured cards to control the flow of the whole meeting, green you are ok to continue your speech, amber it is good to start wrapping up, red you have run out of time and the bell after 30 seconds of red would mean that you are having too much fun.

Anna Bevan, Grammarian introduced the word of the day with a smile “Cantankerous” which apparently means bad-tempered, she watched beautiful uses of the language and interesting descriptive ones not forgetting counting all these filler words that we all are trying to avoid using like Ems, O I just used it, that must’ve made you cantankerous Anna.

Joe spring up to be the Hark master waving the box of chocolate if we listened carefully and answered his inquisitions at the end of the evening, he emphasised the importance of listened for public speakers and how he would be listening to those salient words and phrases.

Andrew Steavenson the first speaker flexed his muscles as he danced his way into displaying what Salsa is all about, how it all started and how it developed over the centuries starting from Nigeria, via Cube and the rest of the world, as it passed by countries, the people added their own flavour, now stop that dancing Andrew you are infecting us with fun. Salsa; a visual guide was the title and it was really.

Florian had a workshop up his sleeve entitled The SAVE Method to convey complex topics simply. The audience enjoyed picking up a number of skills on how to get your point across quickly. Florian suitably injected entertainment and group exercise that showed effective teaching methods. I am sure many of us will use those thoughts in many years to come in our journeys. Here are the clips part 1 and part 2.

Oriana evaluated Andrews speech and she stepped in with obvious confidence commenting on the effectiveness of using visual aids in the speech shedding light on the use of music and Andrew’s passion on the subject.

Pascale evaluated Florian’s workshop dishing out what she found great as well as points to consider to make it even greater. She liked the interactions with the audience, the use of group exercise being engaging. She reminded us of the need to use clear to see displays so that people at the back can see them well.

Ten minutes break gave all the chance to stretch, refresh and hand over those tiny strips of paper with commendations and recommendations to the two speakers.

We chatted to our guests and encouraged them to sign to talk on the night by heading to our Table Topics Master Yumi who swiftly came up with three boxes to choose from to base our speeches on; A subject box, an object box and a location, boy we had fun. The line up included Edwin, Azeem, Amy, Andrew, Claudia and Oriana.

Edwin talked about Aladdin and how he wanted to marry the girl of his dreams, however let’s not forget that Aladdin was a thief.

Azeem described the scene in a tiny cottage with 7 dwarfs cosy compared to the outside world of thunder in the forest.

Amy pulled us into Maleficent drawing comparisons with witches from similar stories like Snow White and how innocent she was as a character.

Andrew went with Cinderella and emphasised that at times you would find yourself working under oppressive work conditions and yes Cinderella did have her slippers made of glass, perhaps a matching glass dress would be good.

Claudia walked us with Shrek and a magic wand that might be more useful in bringing some food to the table instead of just converting a toad to a prince.

Oriana had to select Ario and a poisoned apple juggling both into a story woven around some vocal variety and her melodic voice. Our Grammarian Anna reported 5 uses of the word “Cantankerous” and 17 Em’s. Florian’s descriptive languages “The web is getting denser and denser and denser”, his SAVE acronym.

What a wonderful night packed with high energy, learning, speeches, evaluations and proper time keeping.

For the table topics the winner was Edwin ! Yay ! Congratulations to him and to all those who contributed in turning up and sharing value to improve our lives.

Is it time you joined the fun?

Past meetings Table Topics Toastmasters International

Whisky is worth a speech!

Post author By London Victorians
Post date December 7, 2017

The meeting started with the President; Nuala McHugh, sharing her insightful experience when visiting Excalibur Toastmaster club, the only London based club where members exclusively focus on the advance manual.
She also introduced a new member; Dienaba and handed her the member guide and welcomed her.

Then, the President handed over to the toastmaster for the evening; Mohammed who introduced the theme for the evening: DREAM ON!

He commenced the session by introducing the different functionary roles responsible to ensuring the meeting went smoothly and on schedule:
• Ed was the timekeeper, whose role was to make sure the meeting was on schedule;
• Yumi was the grammarian and was responsible for identifying wonderful use of language throughout the evening as well as the word of the evening (MARVELOUS) keeping track of the necessary words (“umm” “Uhhs” etc.)
• Noorie was the harkmaster , responsible for testing our listen skills and reward us with treats at the end of meeting if her questions were accurately answered.
The toastmaster introduced the first speaker of the evening; Anna presented the project #2 from the Competent communication Manual; Organise your speech. Her speech was entitled “Sport is not just physical”. Anna demonstrated a great body language, a friendly demeanour and presented a very insightful topic.

The second speaker; Charlotte presented the sixth project of the Competent Communication Manual; Vocal variety. Her speech was entitled “Why dreams can be a nightmare”. She showcased a great energy, a connection with the audience and vocal variety with intonations in line with the emotions in her speech.

The third speaker; Eva presented the first project of the Technical Presentations manual. Her speech was entitled “What is 5G?”. Despite all the technical complexity of her topic, Eva kept the audience interested by often interacting with it, using humour and simplification.

Eva delivering a technical speech on 5G.

The fourth and final speech of the evening was delivered by Annabel, who delivered a dramatic talk. Her speech was entitled “Whiskey and an honest friend”. Annabel shows a great ease on stage and body language and transported the audience on a virtual whiskey journey.

After all the speeches were delivered, the timekeeper came on stage to provide the time each speech had lasted.

Then, the evaluations began with the first evaluator; Vibessan, who provided a feedback on the first speech presented by Anna. Andrew evaluated the second speech presented by Charlotte, Eleanor evaluated Eva and finally Andy provided a feedback on Annabel’s speech. All evaluations were constructive and followed the following model: commendations – recommendations- commendations.

The timekeeper came on the stage to indicate the time used for each evaluation.

Before the break, the sergeant at Arms, Joe introduced the 6 guests for the evening. Guests are important part of toastmaster meetings.

After returning from the break, the toastmaster announced the Table Topics session, presented by the Table Topic (TT) Master ; Ha Le who came on to the stage to explain the objectives of TT. The theme of the TT was “Friendship”. The TT master came up on stage and asked 6 questions related to the theme and each time designated a lucky member within the audience, including the guests. This is particularly a good exercise for guests so they can test the waters and have fun!

A sample of the TT questions:
• You and your friend are playing PlayStation, you won and your friend got angry so that he blocked you on Facebook. What do you do?
• You and your friend are in a bar and from afar you see Scarlett Johansson. Your friend wants to talk to her but he is nervous. How do you help him?
• Is it possible to break up with a friend the same way as with a boy/girlfriend?
• …

At the end of the TT session, the TT evaluator: Fahad came on stage to deliver his feedback. He congratulated the participants and welcomed their engagement with the audience and friendliness on stage. He also recommended the participants to maintain eye contact, even when thinking about what to say. In that context, instead of looking down while searching for words or ideas, he suggested to get closer to the audience and look at one person in particular while thinking.

TT Evaluator Fahad giving feedback to the Table Topics speakers.

The General Evaluator; Pascale came on stage to provide the overall evaluation of the evening and her main comments were:
– Saluted the fantastic work of the toastmaster ; Mohammed and encouraged him to take on that challenging role more often
– Increase the thermostat in the room as it was getting colder
– Encourage toastmaster members to engage with the guests

She also provided constructive feedback to the functionary roles.

The Toastmaster thanked the audience or the marvellous evening, all the functionaries as well as the guests and handed over to the President

The distribution of the prizes marked the end of the Toastmaster session and was the result of the votes which took place throughout the evening. Drum roll….. and the winners are :
• Best Table Topic participant: Andy
• Best speech evaluators : Andy and Eleanor
• Best Speech : Charlotte

The President distributed the prizes to the winners, thanked everyone and before ending the session, reminded the audience of the “improve” workshops to take place at the next meeting.

Tags Past meetings, public speaking, speeches, Toastmasters