London Victorians Toastmasters Club

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!

As befitted our first meeting in 2015, the theme of the evening of Tuesday 6^th of January toastmastered by our Vice-President Education Fahad Alturkait was New Year resolutions. Timekeeper Anne was in charge of our lights for her first role in the club – well done Anne! – And grammarian Edwin offered us “anew” as word of the day.

The first speaker of the evening was Ross Colman “2014 – a bad year for aviation safety?” His answer to this question was a very firm no and we embarked on a journey across the various safety systems equipping modern airliners for fire extinguishers in engines to collision avoidance mechanisms. Kohinoor followed with the first speech from the Entertaining Speaker manual titled “New Year Resolutions”. Our professional speaker Sergey concluded the prepared speeches, with an interactive seminar “how to create a powerful story” using a cartoon from 1898 as imagination trigger.

Evaluators Florian, Warren and George then entered the fray highlighting among other points the importance of vocal variety and a strong beginning and conclusion. A table topics session in which several of our very numerous guests that evening followed, led by Marina.

Thursday 8^th of January also several club members and Toastmasters from all over London doing a demonstration meeting in Cardinal Place. A highly interactive meeting focusing on table topics took place, led by Sergey as Toastmaster. Our shiny new banner led the marketing blitz by the escalators to hundreds of offices working whizzing by, most of them with a leaflet “London Victorians – Conquer your fear of public speaking” in their hands!

London Victorians committee would like to thank Land Securities for their help and support in making this demonstration meeting possible.

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.