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Past meetings

Holiday themed meeting

This week’s meeting had a holiday theme, with the hopes of extending the bank holiday even further. Not only did all speakers state what they got up to over the bank holiday, but there were also two speeches about holidays!

Fahad was acting President and gave an articulate introduction to the Toastmasters history and manuals. Fahad also encouraged members to consider becoming a member of the committee, with the Toastmasters New Year starting in July. He highlighted how serving as a club officer can really accelerate your development. Voting for committee members takes place at the AGM on 6th June. Click here for more information on the committee roles.

Fahad as acting President

Fahad handed over to Christophe, our Toastmaster for the evening. Christophe loves this role and has chiselled it down to perfection. He clearly described the role and welcomed each speaker to the stage with their bank holiday activities. Some activities were energetic, such as swimming, fitness classes and playing squash. Some were inspiring like walking on fire or presenting a workshop at a Toastmasters convention in Palma.

Christophe, introducing the holiday theme
Toastmaster Christophe describing the bank holiday theme

Christophe was supported by Thomas as Timekeeper, Alex as Grammarian and Vahagn as Harkmaster. Narayan took up his first role as Sergeant at Arms and greeted the 12 guests.

Alex, ecstatic that the word of the day, pragmatic, was used 9 times!
Vahagn getting ready to reward those who were listening!

Speeches

The initial section of the meeting was for prepared speeches. First up was Pascale, performing a number 4 speech, on Paradise. Pascale took the audience on an immersive trip to the Caribbean. She had the audience dancing at carnival in Trinidad to relaxing on an idyllic beach in Tobago.

Pascale, very happy to win the best speaker ribbon!

Next was Alexandro, who performed speech number 5 about why we travel. He used storytelling to great effect, describing his travels to Tehran, Dubrovnik and Kathmandu. Alexandro used body language to mirror his speech and to convey his message that traveling helps you learn and make the most out of life.

The third speaker Stephen, also performed speech 5. He performed an extremely well structured and clear speech, with three tips on persuasive techniques. Each tip was humorously highlighted with an active example about the audience should vote for him as best speaker!

Annabel gave the final speech of the night from the advanced Entertaining speaker manual on Obsessions. She used light hearted humour and rich content to describe the “cocktail for success”: morning routines, positive mantras and evening classes.

Evaluations

After the speeches, Diane, Paul H, Florian and Fahad performed evaluations for Pascale, Alexandro, Stephen and Annabel respectively. Audience members also completed feedback slips.

Speech feedback tip for persuading people (from Florian): Use open hand gestures, with palms facing the audience to convey sincerity. Focussed eye contact (rather than scanning around the room) is also essential for persuading people.

Fahad - best evaluator
Well done Fahad for winning the best Evaluator ribbon!

Table topics

The second section of the meeting was for Table Topics. Negin took to the stage as Table Topics Master. She gave each participant 3 words: a person, a place and a thing, which members and guests had to link together into a 2 minute table topic.

Great job David for your entertaining table topic about the Pope, a temple and a tiger!

For his second role of the day, Thomas gave some fantastic tips as Table Topics Evaluator. These included:

  • Run with the first thing that comes into your head
  • Make the topic into a story that you can relate to
  • Smile to increase the energy of your words

Well done to Florian, Narayan and guests Andrea, Dee, David, Bola, Abi and Manik for taking part!

Congratulations to Pascale, Fahad and David, who were tonight’s respective speech, evaluator and table topics winners and to all who helped make this a brilliant meeting as usual. We look forward to everyone at next Tuesday!