Author: London Victorians

January is now gone but February started with a bang on Tuesday! Our Toastmaster of the evening was Kohinoor from our closely associated club of Connected Speakers London. Operating our unique timing light was Daniela doing the time management project of her Competent Leadership manual. The tempo of the evening escalated by one notch with Terry as our grammarian of the evening. Completing the team of functionary, was our glamorous Rosie as vote counter.

Club President’s Florian Bay opened the speeches with the vision speech from the High Performance Leadership manual. London Victorians journey only began recently, but the vision for the club is anything but unambitious! Club secretary Ayokunle took up the stage with a journey through the various stages of his quest for happiness. A roast of our area 6 governor George that lives and breathes Toastmasters followed up aptly delivered by Fahad. Sergey concluded the first part of the meeting with an appeal to take control of our destinies and to open up the doors that pop up in our lives. Using the example of a former once hesitant Toastmaster that became world champion of public speaking five years later.

A tough act to evaluate, but club sponsor Warren, followed up by Julia, Daniela and Simon rose to the challenge to deliver constructive evaluations. Our table topics session was chaired by Ross (first time table topics master – congratulations!) using a variety of improvisation techniques using both coins “what happened to you in the year this coin was struck” or unusual words like albertpolis. Assistant division B governor Neil Coleman closed the evening with his general evaluation.

Last week may have been cold in the streets, but the cold stayed well clear of our lovely home of the Windsor Castle Pub. Toastmaster of the evening Andy, led us through an evening run like a clockwork, with three functionaries helping him! Congratulations to Rosie for keeping a steady hand on time, to grammarian Daniela who unleashed a good muse into the room and vote counter Fahad looking after these oh so useful feedback slips!

Recently joined member, Anne opened the fray with her ice-breaker speech titled “Beyond Borders” on the diversity of her origins and the multiple cultural strands that make up her family. Vice-President Membership, Terry followed with a number four speech from the Competent Communicator manual, “Yellow”. We were treated to a flurry of beautiful language and to a journey to the grounds of the golden boys of Watford F.C. The finish of the evening was an advanced speech from the Persuasive Speaking manual, done by Marina Lussich. She led us through an interactive demonstration of cold-calling, highlighting the pitfalls to avoid (e.g. poor research of the target) and tips to follow.

Our three speeches were evaluated by Ross (first time evaluator – congratulations!), Florian and Marcel. Some of the points covered, were the importance of vocal variety and “less is more” in the case of using descriptive or advanced language. Our usual mingling break followed, with numerous guests including returning ones asking to take part in table topics later and asking questions about the club.

A hugely entertaining table topics session followed led by Fahad Alturkait, featuring questions such as “How do you explain a chair to an alien?” or “how to you explain women to men?”. Each of these worth a philosophical treatise, but to be tacked in one to two minutes only!

A vibrant session with “dissection” as the Word of the Day, thanks to Ross Coleman our Grammarian of the evening. Toastmaster of the evening, Jill Segal led us through the three sections of our meeting – Prepared Speeches, Evaluations and Table Topics.

First in line for Speeches was our very own Daniela Ortner, finishing her competent communicator project number 10 “Inspire your audience“… which she did indeed! Daniela, best speaker of the night, showed us how money CAN buy happiness, in this case for Ormond Street Hospital children and their benefactors. OUR VERY FIRST CC AWARD! George Chiesa delivered a technical briefing on online password security which got us all thinking, and our President Florian Bay made us laugh with his venture into modern art in Paris.

Table Topics Master Sergey posed some very hard questions to which our members AND guests responded bravely, with one first-time guest winning the Best Topic vote!

A lovely end to our first four months as London’s newest Club.