Despite a number of last minute changes to the agenda, London Victorians Toastmaster meeting on 6th of December was full of great speeches and incredible energy as always.
Our Toastmaster for the evening was Lorenzo, who is working in London for 6 months and has decided to join our club while he is here. Lorenzo is a Toastmaster in Milan, Italy and his experienced showed in coordinating a great meeting.
Lorenzo’s theme for the evening was Languages, and we heard every speakers dream language to learn in the future. Lot’s would like to learn French & Spanish and some would like to learn the language of love, and Klingon!
We had two Icebreaker speeches (the first speech in the Toastmaster Communications program) and they were, once again, delivered to an exceptionally high standard.
Dan’s speech ‘The Power of Ideas’ and Phill’s speech ‘Lesson’s learnt, Lesson’s Taught’ both showed the audience that these two guys have bags of natural skills to make future speeches great, and that they both have aspirations to use public speaking in their lives to inspire others in the future. No doubt they will!
Gary then gave us a project 2 speech and taught us ‘The art of an effective cold call’. A classic speech structure of Introduction, Body and Conclusion was used to show the audience what not to do, what should be done and to encourage us all to not be afraid of cold calling. Great techniques throughout the speech included using props and referencing others, all added to the delivery.
Our reunited member Eddie asked us to ‘Make the Time’ in our lives for things we might have left behind. Personal stories enhanced the effectiveness of the speech and his purpose was clearly delivered and inspired us all to take time for things other than work (and inspired us to vote for him because he won the Best Speaker ribbon).
Karen finished off the prepared speakers with another inspirational speech entitled ‘The Added Value of work’, using personal stories, references and body language to highlight how we should all consider how we should not take lightly the value of what we have, sighting the incredible feats of people with disabilities to achieve great things in the face of challenging personal circumstances.
More than just speeches
Our meeting also included giving feedback in the form of evaluations. Terry, Florian, Christophe, Nuala and Fahad all gave detailed, encouraging and useful tips to the audience about what was good and what could be improved in the 5 speakers speeches.
Fahad’s evaluation of Karen’s speech was the favourite of the audience and he won the nights evaluation ribbon.
Members and guests alike should take time to see & hear evaluations from our members, the things they notice that are worth commendation and the tips for improvements should be considered by everyone in their own speeches.
Our Table Topics section was skill fully handled by Cleo, with a theme inline with the meeting of languages. With no prior knowledge of the subject coming their way 5 speakers came to the stage a gave 2 minute speeches about language and hit us with humorous and informative impromptu speeches on the subjects.
Particularly notable was John, who would like his future partner to speak French, because of the way that anything spoken in French sounds ‘sexy’. He won the Best Table Topic ribbon with his humorous effort.
Robert gave the table topic speakers a set of encouraging evaluations. Skilfully navigated his way through 5 evaluations in a few minutes and gave great tips on what everyone can do right in this section.
Rounding of the meeting we have feedback from our Grammarian, who’s word of the day “foible” was used by an impressive amount of characters and recommended everyone replaces filler words with a …….. pause.
Our ‘hark master’ Diane prepared some brilliant and challenging questions from sections of the meeting to check on the audiences listening skills.
Time was carefully recorded by Caleb and he held back from the bell for our stand in GE John, who gave an exciting set of feedback for the functionaries and in particular started a new trend and London Victorians by describing evaluators commendations as the ‘bun’ and recommendations and the ‘meat’ in a a feedback sandwich.
A great meeting as always!
You must be logged in to post a comment.