London Victorians Toastmasters Club

Edwin was our charismatic Toastmaster of the evening introduced each speaker to the stage. The theme of the night was Inspirational Woman, each speaker was given the opportunity to name a woman who inspired them.

Tasked with keeping this meeting on time was Tatianna, Andrew was grammarian, Fil as harkmaster and finally Thomas as vote counter and Table Topics evaluator.

The first speaker of the night was Alessia, her speech informed the audience of methods and skills that could be introduced at school in order to better prepare students for the working World.

AK’s inspiring speech had the message “Your Words Have Power”. A very apt topic, his speech outlined three examples where words had the power to change an otherwise hopeless scenario.

Third speaker was Florian who delivered an advanced speech. He spoke about the technical topic of nuclear safety, explaining through the use of a visual presentation and simplifying challenging concepts through the use of metaphors. These techniques enabled Florian to educate the audience in an otherwise very complex subject.

At Toastmaster meetings there is an opportunity to give a short impromptu speech. This is a very rewarding skill to develop. Through practice members develop the ability to organize their thoughts quickly and respond to an impromptu question or topic with skill.
Alex’s role at the meeting was to select the topics each speaker was given.

Terry was asked to detail his perfect date night. In order to rekindle their relationship, he described how he and his wife visit Brighton Pier, the place where they first met. They would play on the 2p slot machines to win toys for their two children. The perfect date would end at KFC where he would splurge on a romantic dinner.

Kim was asked to describe her life as a superhero, she recounted how useful it is to have the power of invisibility. Although this was Kim’s first time visiting Toastmasters, she informed us in her impromptu speech that she had attended previous London Victorians meetings incognito!

Paul was asked who out of three celebrities would he take on a cruise ship, he selected American politician Donald Trump! This decision developed into very humorous impromptu speech outlining the reasons why he would take the billionaire politician on a sailing trip.

An enjoyable evening with laughter, education and inspiration! Join us as a guest at our next meeting on Tuesday the 15th March!

At Toastmasters we love giving out awards and the theme of our last Toastmasters meeting was “Victorians’ award show”. Taking charge as Toastmaster of the meeting was Fahad. Assisting him as timekeeper was Eleanor G who took this role for the first time. We love to have unusual words of the day in Toastmasters meetings and tonight’s one by our grammarian Stephen was “pizazz”. Maria and Andrew S completed the crew as respectively harkmaster and vote counter.

We had five speakers on the agenda. The first one Alex was beginning his Toastmasters journey by doing his icebreaker speech “A little bit about me”. Here we learnt just that, including his job as actuarial consultant and his travels in India, South America and Nepal. The second speaker for the evening was Nadia “King Solomon – Debating what are we here for and what’s life all about?” in her speech Nadia covered part of Ecclesiastes and the importance of not taking a text out of context. The third speech “Life with Jim” was by Olivia. In a crafty twist the subject was her relationship with gym and how by exercising more she became happier and stronger. Our fourth speaker was Annabel “Shop Now” who covered the history of shopping from ancient Greeks, to modern supermarkets to a future of drones and virtual reality. The final speaker was Nuala “Design is about people” who explained more about her job as aircraft interior designer and the three main end-users to take into account; economy class passengers; business class passengers and flight attendants.

The beauty of Toastmasters is that everyone who speaks receive a through verbal and written evaluation of his/her speech. Evaluating Alex was Thomas who recommended a slower speaking pace. Isabelle as evaluator of Nadia’s speech praised her clear structure but suggested she uses no notes in the future. Andy evaluated Olivia’s speech, praised her intriguing introduction but highlighted that the speech should have been outlined at the start. Terry took on the evaluation of Annabel’s speech and commended her for her clear structure. Finally, John evaluated Nuala, praising her use of the stage but recommended adding more pauses at key points in the speech.

After a short break, the meeting reconvened for a table topics impromptu speaking session. Keeping up with the movie theme, our table topics master AK asked questions such as “what’s your favorite movie line” “what’s your guilty cheesy movie?” or “Are there too many bad movies”. The session was evaluated by Eleanor H who provided thorough feedback to all speakers.

Maria and Stephen then came back for their reports. Following on from them was our general evaluator Chris from London Corinthians who evaluated the club, ambiance and everyone else not evaluated so far.

Congratulations to our best speaker Olivia, best evaluator John and best table topics speaker Florian.