In spite of rain downpours and the slow end of summer as we enter September. Another amazing evening of public speaking was lined-up in our usual venue of the Windsor Castle Pub. With no less than four speakers, including a number 10 speech ‘Inspire Your Audience’ from the Competent Communicator manual and two advanced speeches.
Taking the stage this evening as Toastmaster, was club treasurer Ayokunle ‘AK’ with holidays as the theme of the meeting. Tonight’s functionaries were Abigail as timekeeper, looking after our speakers’ use of time. Olivia looking after our speakers’ use of the English language and introducing ‘Elevate’ as word of the day. For the very first time tonight, we introduced a Harkmaster, a new role performed by Fahad to challenge all audience members to listen carefully to tonight’s speakers. Finally Toby took on the mantle of vote counter.
The first of four speakers tonight was Alex ‘Why go to India’. Alex recounted us his travels to India through the use of very descriptive language and numerous anecdotes. From the presence of tigers, monkeys and elephants; the latter of which are the most dangerous of the bunch. Through cooking classes in South India. Joyce followed on for her number 10 speech titled ‘Potential’. Joyce urged all of us to give a chance to others, since after all “where does experience begins” and peppered the speech with anecdotes from her days as a “super social worker”. Our following two speakers both did speeches from advanced manuals, respectively Interpretive Reading and The Effective Salesperson. Club president Florian began with ‘Collision at Cajamarca’ a reading from the story of the Battle of Cajamarca that marked the end of the Inca Empire, as written by one of Francisco Pizzaro’s companions. Sergey followed with ‘What can coaching do for you’ highlighting the benefit of coaching to better develop oneself.
The evaluation of our speakers followed. Marina evaluated Alex and commented on his great use of descriptive language and for jumping straight into the subject. She also recommended that Alex incorporate more energy and vocal variety in future speeches. Terry evaluated Joyce’s speech and highlighted the benefits a clearer and more organized speech structure would have brought to complement the strong body language and vocal variety of Joyce’s speech. Hiram in his evaluation of Florian suggested adding yet more vocal variety and perhaps commenting on the story as he went along. Finally, Thomas evaluated Sergey’s speech and suggested that Sergey spends more time in leading the buyer through the process.
For the table topics session of this meeting, table topics master Magda decided to adopt a sci-fi theme. Speakers were asked in turn to image what would happen if they saw a UFO landing in front of them while driving at night. What would they of id they had access to a time machine! What would they do if they could purchase an android robot? Or what kind of superpowers would our speakers like to possess. Evaluating this improvised speaking session was Marina, who gave sharp feedback to all of our table topics speakers.
As part the meeting’s wrap-up Olivia came back for her grammarian report, praising our speakers for their effective use of the English language. Harkmaster Fahad then asked questions such as “What school Joyce had in mind for her children?” to test everyone’s listening skills. General evaluator Nazia followed with her evaluation of all the functionaries and evaluator of the evening. For after all in Toastmasters everyone is evaluated and receives feedback, not just the speakers!
Come along in two weeks on September 15th for our very first table topics and humorous speech contest.
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