A new year of public speaking is now upon us and if “I would like to improve my public speaking and presentation skills” is one of your new year’s resolutions for 2016. Why no come and visit us here at London Victorians?
Taking charge of our first meeting of 2016 and a busy night of public speaking was Toastmaster Prateek. Assisted by Alex as timekeeper, Hannah as grammarian who picked “aspiration” as word of the day, Karen as harkmaster and finally Maria as vote counter.
Public speaking is all about “saying a set idea within a set time”
Beginning her journey into public speaking tonight was Annabel whose icebreaker speech “3 Jobs” talked about her working life so far. She is a self-confessed workaholic, who did jobs from the paper round to being a shop assistant to working now in marketing following her university degree. Following on with our second speech of the evening was Eleanor “How are you today?” Eleanor’s speech tackled the difficult subject of mental health and how overlooked it is with most sufferer being discriminated against or fearing discrimination. Consequently one of the best thing one can do is simply asking someone “How are you today?” Nuala was our third speaker of the evening “Make Sense”. This intriguing speech informed us on the wonderful possibilities offered by our sense of smell. A sense so powerful in fact that it can boost memory and act as a warning system to us by smelling rotten food or gas. Our fourth speech this evening “Pretty Fly for a Wifi” was done was Thomas. Thomas told us everything there was to know about Wifi and in particular the security systems of WEP and WPA and how Wifi words. Internet through thin air is amazing isn’t it? Public speaking can be used to persuade others and this is what our final speaker of the evening Terry did. In “It’s not you it’s me” Terry recounted us his personal journey from failure to success and how he was the one that triggered changes in himself.
Public speaking can only be learnt by receiving feedback on one’s performance and each of our speakers tonight was evaluated. These “speeches on a speech” were made by Tarjei evaluating Annabel. Olivia as Eleanor’s evaluator. Toby who evaluated Nuala. Edwin who gave feedback on Thomas’s speech and finally Florian who evaluated Terry’s speech.
During the second half of the meeting, members and guests alike practiced their impromptu public speaking skills in our table topics session. Facilitated by Yvonne, it featured questions such as “what would do as CEO of Facebook” “What would you say in a message to HM The Queen from space?” or even “What about a wet Christmas instead of a white Christmas?” The session was evaluated by Edwin who provided feedback to members and guests alike.
Hannah and Karen then came back for their respective reports as grammarian and harkmaster. Followed by Christopher of sister club St Paul’s Speakers who evaluated the entire meeting.
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