The day when ones becomes a speaker and takes to the stage is always special. In our last club meeting, we were delighted to have six members of London Victorians doing their first speech. Alongside four others doing other speeches from the Competent Communication manual.
Edwin was our toastmastering our first ever speakathon. Ably assisted by Nuala as timekeeper and Hannah as vote counter.
Our first speaker of the night was Sandra ‘Find the Best, Remember the Joy’. Sandra spoke to us about his hometown of Timisoara and her study of Chemistry in the United States. She was followed by Abigail ‘When a man is tired of London he is tired of life’ as second speaker. While she never intended to move to London, it is now Abi’s home and where she met her family including two bunnies whose antics are legendary! Charles with ‘The Opening’ followed as third speaker. Charles told us his childhood in Paris, how his parents’ travails affected him and how he grasped the nettle and decided to change for the better himself. ‘What do you do?’ was Olivia’s speech on her job in the responsible investment industry and her objective to bring it in the mainstream. Finally our last speaker of the first half was Isabelle with ‘Journalism: the good, the bad, the ugly’.
Evaluating each speaker in turn were Eddie, Fahad, Yvonne, Marina and Prateek. Recommendations included using the stage more, incorporating more vocal variety, eye contact and not using notes if possible.
The second half of our speakathon followed after the break. The speaker opening it was Sophia ‘Facing my fear’ outlining her journey so far in facing her fear of public speaking. Nadia followed with her Icebreaker speech, where she talked about the story of launching her own smoothie making business and her travels to Jordan. Stephen followed on with ‘Bitcoin’. There we learnt all there was to learn about Bitcoins, including that they are linked to virtual wallets and how there are 21m of them out there! AK then did a project #3 from the Competent Communication manual ‘Friendship’. Giving the example of two relationships with friends and how they changed and evolved over the years. Thomas was then our final speaker of the evening with ‘Two Stars’ a review of the movie Fifty Shades of Grey seen on an airplane.
Our evaluators for the second half were Florian, Terry, Joyce, Eleanor and Kate. Recommendations given covered included use of notes, speech structure and length and the usage of body language.
The mammoth task of evaluating our ten evaluators fell to Polina who provided feedback to everyone.
Well done everyone on making our first speakathon a rousing success!
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