Tag: Past meetings

Introductions, Poems & Fairy Tales! Public Speaking full of Learning and Inspiration!

Post author By London Victorians
Post date July 23, 2017

Our last week Toastmasters meeting was a great opportunity to learn a lot from, and about each other.

The former President of London Victorians club – Terry – has shared his thoughts on his experience in the past two years since he founded the club with Florian and Fahad in 2015. Terry, gained a lot of invaluable skills and experience and also really enjoyed the journey, especially by seeing how the others have developed as speakers and the growth of the club.

A Toastmaster of the meeting – Pascale, is a great example of how the activity of the club inspire great progress. Within six months from joining the club she not only can lead meetings with confidence but she’s also taking care of the new members as a VP of membership.

We can already see the results with our recent joiners – Alexandra and Claudia, who demonstrate great motivation and commitment from the very start.

Alexandra, as a Sargent at Arms has warmly welcomed all guests but only until two weeks ago she was a guest herself. Claudia, instead has delivered her Ice Breaker speech only a week after joining the club. She has shared an inspirational story on her path to confidence.

The meeting was studded with more learning and inspiration.

Fahad, encouraged by the success of London Victorians has tried to set up another club in West London. Although the idea did not took off yet at the first attempt he had some valuable leadership lessons to share. He emphasized the necessity of commitment, time and effort as key ingredients of any project, and the importance of face to face interaction.

Then, Alex and Eleanor enchanted us with great story telling.

Alex, has proved he’s comfortable with visual aids by using beautiful slides with no text but the title of the poem he recited “Highwayman” by Alfred Nayes. This powerful technique was further enhanced by vivid language, expressive body language and great vocal variety. No surprise he won The Best Speaker ribbon.

Eleanor, with Grimm’s fairy tale – Twelve Brothers – has transported us back to our childhood. In the feedback on her speech– Vahagn – summarized this as follows: “The content of the speech is a king, but the delivery is a queen, and she runs a household. “

Another useful advice was shared by Matthew – our Grammarian. The word of the day ‘simplicity”, reminds us about the top quality of a competent communicator – being easily understood.

The feedback extracted from our seasoned evaluators – Terry and Florian – is the power of vulnerability and opening up. It helps to build trust, connection and increase empathy of the audience. This is also discussed in Brene Brown’s Ted talk, which I highly recommend to watch:

https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability/transcript?language=en

The second part of the meeting continued with high energy level. Andy – Table topics master – has asked seven randomly picked speakers to answer his creative questions. Big congratulations to our guests who bravely rose to a challenge! The winner – Paul – entertained us with a hilarious Aussie adventure in the desert which gave him a proud nickname MadMax.

Traditionally, the meeting has ended with a Harkmaster’s quiz held by Anabel. She not only has a good ear after years of musical education but also great listening skills. She tested us on this skill and rewarded correct answers with some Scottish sweets.

We’re already looking forward to our next session. Next week meeting has a theatrical theme – we welcome all members to conquer the stage and become a star of the meeting. Costumes are not required, please just bring a smile and positive energy

This report was written as part of our new club role of ‘Meeting Reporter’ the the fantastic Paulina! Not only do we learn to present in front of an audience, now at London Victorians we are learning to present to the world, via the Internet! (and look how much she enjoyed it :))

Tags Past meetings, Pimlico, public speaking, Toastmasters, Victoria

Personal health, Peaceful protests and Personal wealth….. all in a night’s work at London Victoria weekly Toastmasters Club

Post author By London Victorians
Post date July 12, 2017

Our Toastmasters Club meeting in Westminster this week was full of informative speeches and inspirational learning.

London Victorians new president Nuala banished our fears by opening the meeting with a reminder of how our efforts to become public speaking ‘Hero’s’ will have a beneficial effect on other fears that hold us back.

Picking up the role of Toastmaster of the Meeting, Karen continued the energy and explained how the meeting would work, and how Toastmaster Clubs like ours near Pimlico give huge support to everyone who comes to the stage with huge applause and cheering.

Karen then introduced the functionaries of the meeting, Stephen in-charge of timekeeping, Fahad in-charge of grammar, Cleo in-charge of listening and Terry in-charge of the meeting report. Each functionary came to the stage and introduced their roles and what to expect from them later.

Karen’s theme for the meeting was inspired by summer and her FOMO (fear of missing out). She asked everyone taking part in the meeting for tips on things to do in London (other than Toastmasters) during the summer. This tied the meeting together nicely and gave everyone some ideas for what to do with their spare time!

Our grammarian Fahad offered the Word of the Day which was ‘Sizzling’, this was quite contrary to the weather, however every time it was used on stage the audience got to cheer “ooooh yeah’ in their sexiest possible voices that warmed us up a little.

Tonight’s Toastmasters meeting in London was blessed with 3 fantastic prepared speeches from our members.

Kicking us off, and our diet in to shape was Gabriele, who’s speech outlined what we need to know about carbohydrates in our diet, the effects of too much ‘white’ carbs and how we can change what we eat to make us healthier. Coming from an Italian the suggestion to reduce pizza & pasta in our weekly meals was obviously a tough recommendation.

Isabelle delivered the second speech of the evening with a project 8 speech from the Competent Communicator manual which sets the objectives of getting comfortable using visual aids. Her images conjured emotion and the artistic impressions within them lead to speech that needed to be explained, the perfect use of images when presenting.

Her speech linked art with protest and was a great example of not only how to use visuals to make point and enhance a speech, left us with takeaways that literally stayed impressed on our minds……. certainly long enough until the voting for Best Speaker which Izzy won for this great speech.

Izzy was the winner of the best speaker (give me that ribbon Nuala)

Our third speech at the London Toastmasters club this evening was from Thomas. An advanced speech from the ‘Speak to Inform’ manual this speech was perfectly executed to help the audience understand complex information in a non-technical way.

This was carried out perfectly by our in-house finance professional by explaining the importance of diversifying your investment portfolio to mitigate risk. Or ‘egg’s in a basket’, though I’m not sure whether the chicken came first.

Our speech evaluators Diane, Pascale and Negin carried out the role we learn so much from by offering the audience very professional evaluations of each speech.

Diane pointed out the value we can take from the power of facts and clear advice. Pascale cleverly used visual aids in her evaluation to reinforce the impact they have on a good speech. Negin wrapped up the evaluations with very analytical detail on how the technical speech was made amenable for our non-technical audience.

Diane won the Best Evaluator Ribbon for a great evaluation, in particular for using no notes at all to give a 3 minute evaluation she’d only had 10 minutes to prepare for, well done!

Just before the break it was the turn of our guests to introduce themselves. They contributed to Karen’s theme of the meeting by giving tips on what we can do in the London in the summer including outdoor Zumba, visiting fake beaches on the Thames and drinking beer!

Florian handled a very interesting table topics session, each table topic subject was just a single number. A very clever way of inspiring creative impromptu speeches and we had a range of responses from the humorous to inspirational goal setting to travel. Here is a skill to take a single word or number and make a two-minute speech from it, only we Toastmasters can do this with style.

Out of 6 amazing table topics speeches, the audience picked Lorenzo’s speech about the number 14 quadrillion as the winner of the ribbon. A big reward for the biggest number of the night!

Andrew positively evaluated our table topics speakers, offering each of them a commendation to highlight what they did well in their impromptu speech.

Summaries of great uses of grammar followed from the grammarian Fahad, who made a point of words and phrases used throughout the night that had surprised him (in a good way). He also noted 16 uses of the word of the day ‘Sizzling’ “Ooooh yeah”.

Our harkmaster then tested how well we had been listening to the facts throughout the meeting, I was pleased that she through chocolate rather than healthy treats as the prizes for answering her questions correctly.

Before the meeting was wrapped up we were treated to a General Evaluation of the meeting and all those speakers who had not been evaluated yet by Monika, who visited us from the other London Toastmasters Clubs she is a member of.

The last thing to do was to welcome our newest members, Alexandra, Helena & Misha! Welcome to the club!

It really was a fun, upbeat and educational meeting, can’t believe we have to wait another whole WEEK till the next Toastmasters meeting near Victoria Station in London.

Tags evaluation, London, Past meetings, Pimlico, speeches, table topics, Victoria, Westminster

Past meetings

Education, Elections and Entertainment – meeting report 27th of June

Post author By London Victorians
Post date June 30, 2017

Another interesting and exciting Toastmasters meeting at our great club near London Victoria was held on Tuesday 27^th of June 2017.

Our president Terry kicked off, reminding everyone that this was the last meeting of the Toastmasters year and therefore his last meeting as president. From next week our incoming president Nuala will take the reins.

He also reminded everyone how the fear of public speaking is linked to the fear of rejection and by practicing the former, he has helped reduce the later which helps with his job as a sales person.

This evenings Toastmasters was Christophe, who has been caught up with other commitments for the last few months and reminded everyone that because of the nerves he felt carrying out the role this week, it’s important to stay well practiced at the skill of public speaking to help keep these nerves at bay.

Our first speech was from Nuala and it was an educational about the importance of the evaluations that take place for everyone who takes part in club meetings.

Her educational was really well structured and offered a mass of great information on how to enhance these evaluations to give positive, motivational and educational feedback to speakers within the 3 minutes we have to do so.

Our second speech was about the people power involved in political elections. For a subject that could be a little deep, our speaker Karen gave a text book example of how to present a technical subject in an amenable way for any audience.

This speech was littered with audience engagement, humour, great visual aids and the speakers own passion. Combined with hitting the objectives of this Project 8 Speech from the Competent Communicator manual, which is to have fully researched your topic and provide evidence of such in the way of relaying facts, Karen’s speech gave the audience real food for thought about the power of their vote.

The evening’s third speech was the eventual winner of the nights Best Speaker ribbon. Annabel gave us a speech from an advanced manual called The Entertaining Speaker.

Entertaining it was indeed, the topic of online dating made for a humorous speech which engaged the audience and caused many a chuckle from them.

Online dating wins a Toastmasters Ribbon (again)

As always, each of the 3 speeches received a personalised Evaluation. Our evaluators were Terry, Negin & Dan who all made an incredible job of giving motivating and detailed analysis of each speech.

After a break for tea, coffee and chatting we had our impromptu speech practice session called Table Topics. One of the clubs VPE’s, Alex, led the session with topics that challenged the speakers to persuade famous cartoon characters to take abstract courses of action.

As abstract as they were, members and guests alike took the topics in true Toastmasters fashion and delivered their 1-2 minute unprepared speeches with style.

Each table topic speaker was evaluated in style by Fahad, who had at least 1 commendation and recommendation for improvement for each of the speakers to learn for the next topic.

Toastmasters meetings can’t run effectively without functionaries. Our timekeeper, Florian, kept efficient track of the meetings time and livened up the role with a theme of time travel.

Our grammarian Nick did an amazing job of listening and recalling some great uses of the English language, as well as pointing out the number of filler words used in the meeting and how these um’s and ah’s can detract from our credibility as speakers.

Then our Harkmaster Matt tested our listening skills with some questions about what had been said throughout the whole meeting.

We are grateful to our general evaluator Kim, she tidied up the meeting by evaluating all those not evaluated till then. She also gave some great comments on how good the club and the meetings was, with a few pointers for the future.

Whether you are a meeting participant, audience member or guest, you will have left this meeting having learnt something and with a smile on your face….. If you weren’t there, make sure you come next week so not to miss out.

Click here for our location in London’s Westminster Area

Tags London, Past meetings, Pimlico, public speaking, Toastmasters, Victoria, Westminster

Past meetings Table Topics

Animal Theme Meeting

Post author By London Victorians
Post date June 1, 2017

This week, Hannah made her debut as Toastmaster with an animal theme. Hannah ran the meeting without a hitch and even surprised the general evaluator that this was her first time in the role! Hannah asked each speaker – what animal they would like to be and why? This was a fantastic way to delve a bit deeper into our members’ personalities. At London Victorians we have aspiring hippos, dolphins, haggises, lions and dragons, to name a few!

Hannah our Toastmaster of the evening presenting the animal theme — Hannah doing a fabulous job as Toastmaster

Hannah was supported by Paul M as Timekeeper and Pascale as Grammarian. Annabel made the many guests feel welcome as Sergeant at Arms.

Paul M, bringing a bit of humour to the timekeeper role

Speeches

The initial section of the meeting was for prepared speeches. This week we had speeches from either end of the competent communicator manual!

First up was Paul L, performing his upcoming best man’s speech as his icebreaker. He presented humorous anecdotes about adventures with his brother, using the power of 3 to great effect!

Well done for delivering your icebreaker Paul!

Next was Ani, who performed an inspiring speech number 5 about how to pick yourself up and be unstoppable. Ani literally used her body to show how life can bring you down to your knees. She followed with tips how to get back up again.

The third speaker was Isabelle, who performed speech 6. As usual, Isabelle delivered an extremely moving piece, where she described how free speech is under attack!

George gave the final speech of the night and the manual (CC10) about his travels to Uganda, inspiring us all to go and build passion fruit farm irrigation systems. He captured the audience’s attention through his fantastic storytelling skills and acting out dialogue.

Well done George for completing the CC manual!

Evaluations

After the speeches, Diane, Alexandro, Charlotte and Florian performed evaluations for Paul, Ani, Isobelle and George respectively. Audience members also completed feedback slips.

Speech feedback tip for inspiring people (from Florian): Firstly, mention the inspiring message you are trying to convey early in the speech. Secondly, make sure the speech content relates directly to the message. Thirdly, include an obstacle that you overcame to make the message stronger.

Florian never gets tired of winning a ribbon!

Table topics

The second section of the meeting was for Table Topics. Paulina took to the stage as Table Topics Master. She presented a very novel and entertaining table topics theme. Paulina read a news story about a car crash and asked members and guests to re-tell the story as a news reporter, a dictator, a nursery school teacher, a director and at a nursing home.

Well done Matt – you make a great nursery school teacher!

Alex followed with some fantastic fast tips as Table Topics Evaluator. Well done to Terry, Eleanor G, Matt, Nuala and our guest, Dharmalingham for taking part!

Congratulations to Isabelle, Florian and Matt, 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 seeing everyone next Tuesday!

Tags Animal, education, Past meetings

Past meetings

London Victorians 100th Meeting!

Post author By London Victorians
Post date May 10, 2017

London Victorians celebrated its 100^th meeting this week! To mark this momentous occasion, we had an extra special meeting. Not only were there balloons, banners and cake, we had 6 amazing speakers and a centenary theme!

Terry, our president got the audience pumped, with extreme cheering exercises! He set the scene of how the club has blossomed from just 3 members to over 50, now meeting weekly.

Terry handed over to Nuala, our fantastic Toastmaster of the evening. Nuala kept the energy going through the meeting while injecting humour and useful information. She welcomed each speaker to the stage with their answer to the question “If you had to do something at least 100 times, what would it be?” Answers included birthdays, detox, escape rooms, roller coaster rides, massages, speeches and holidays to name a few.

Nuala was supported by Pascale as Timekeeper, Paulina as Grammarian and Mickaela as Harkmaster. Cleo was Sergeant at Arms and warmly greeted the 10 guests.

Mickaela introducing the Harkmaster role

Speeches – part 1

As this was a special occasion, the whole meeting was dedicated to speeches! There were 6 speeches in total, 3 for each half of the meeting.

First up was Charlotte, performing a number 2 speech, on how journaling can make you thrive. Charlotte gave a moving, well-structured account of how writing feelings down can really improve your mental health.

Charlotte delivering the 1st speech of the night

Next was Vahagn, with speech number 4. He used storytelling to great effect, encouraging us all to learn from other’s experiences. He talked about a positive, enthusiastic Chinese lady he met to clearly convey his message that personality makes the greatest difference in life.

The final speaker for the first part of the meeting was Diane, who performed speech 6. Diane was a natural at using vocal variety to induce interest, humour and suspense to her message. She also used visual aids (chocolates) and a great structure to drive her point that distrust isn’t the best strategy!

Evaluations – part 1

After the speeches, Isabelle, Lorenzo and Alexandro performed evaluations for Charlotte, Vahagn, and Diane respectively. Audience members also completed feedback slips.

Speech feedback tip of the week (from Lorenzo): Exaggerate the objectives relating to the competent communicator manual speech you are completing. Don’t forget about the objectives from previous speeches though.

Speeches – part 2

The second part of the meeting was for another 3 speeches.

First up was Robert, a guest from Early Bird Speakers. Robert performed speech number 6 speech on poetry, titled “Thank you Mrs Tonks”. He started with a smooth mellifluous explanation about what poetry is and why he didn’t always identify with it. He finished with a poem, during which he embodied a drag queen to give his strong message!

Next was Andrew, also with speech number 6. He cleverly linked 3 Olympic years, to his love of Salsa dancing and how he met his wife. Andrew had a great speech structure and injected vocal variety through a couple of humorous accents.

Andrew speaking about his 3 memorable Olympic years

The final speaker was George, with speech 9. His aim was to persuade the audience to use Ebay to make money. He gave step by step instructions using visual aids, while cleverly connecting each step to his love of aircraft.

Evaluations – part 2

After the speeches, Annabel, Fahad and Dan gave evaluations for Robert, Andrew, and George respectively. Audience members also completed feedback slips.

Speech feedback tip of the week (from Annabel/Fahad): A good way to show vocal variety is to embody someone else. Use dialogue to develop your speech in a 2-3 line exchange.

Congratulations to Diane and Robert, who won the best speech ribbons, and to Lorenzo and Fahad, who won the best evaluator ribbons. Thanks to all who helped make this historic meeting extra special. We look forward to everyone at next Tuesday!

Tags 100th meeting, Past meetings, speeches