This week’s meeting was opened by our new President, Dominique Fourniol, who reminded us of Toastmaster’s history and gave us a description of the various manuals that it is possible to work through as a Toastmasters member. Another assured performance from Dom that would have been of particular interest to the guests, which is one of the President’s main objectives.

Toastmaster for the evening was Michaela Talbot who gave her usual faultless performance, and told us the three main reasons that she continues to come to Toastmasters: the feedback, the stage practice, and the bar! Michaela had also gone to the trouble of asking all the participants what their dream job or dream place to live would be. A really well prepared element that helped us learn something about others in the club.

We were treated to three speeches from experienced members of the club. Firstly Rosalind delivered her No.10 speech – a personal and inspiring story of her father’s death from leukaemia, and how adversity can be overcome through love and compassion. A fantastic speech that earned the best prepared speech award on the night. Congratulations to Ros on achieving her Competent Communicator award.

Fresh from her travels in the USA, Zoe gave us a speech on how best to organise a family reunion. Apparently the secret ingredients are location, plenty of activities to suit all ages, and timing the reunion so that as many as possible can attend. A really well structured and warmly delivered speech, it’s great to have Zoe back with us!

Thirdly we had a speech from the ever energetic Freddie Daniells, speaking from the advanced Humorous Speech manual. Transforming the story of how he awaited the launch of the new iPhone 4 into a funny and fast-paced narrative it was an excellent example of vocal variety and dramatic storytelling, delivered with typical Freddie Daniells gusto!

After the break the speeches were evaluated by Nathalie Durmuller, Peter Fruzetti and Chris Boden respectively. Guy Smith took charge of the Table Topics session, giving participants the chance to indulge in some salesmanship. Topics ranged from trying to sell the merits of black and white TVs in an age of high definition; selling the idea of smoking to a health conscious population; selling the holiday potential of Slough; and selling the tempting prospect of a dinner date with Gordon Brown – a performance for which Chris Boden won a justly deserved Table Topics prize. Well done to Guy for producing such inventive Topics that provided some great humour.

The Table Topics were evaluated by the inimitable Ratan Lele. Ratan gave another excellent evaluation, mixing useful recommendations with his own unique brand of humour. This created a Holborn Speakers first – a three way split in the Best Evaluator award, shared by Ratan, Chris Boden and Peter Fruzetti.

The meeting was rounded off by a General Evaluation from Andrew Jones of Early Bird Speakers, providing some useful recommendations for members and the club as a whole. Thanks to Andrew for filling the role.

Thus another successful Holborn meeting adjourned downstairs to the bar. For those of you wise enough to be in possession of a ticket to the Holborn Anniversary Party on the 23rd July, we shall see you there. Otherwise, our next regular meeting is on August 3rd.

Filed by: jgoddard | Category: Meetings
Thursday, July 22nd 2010 5:22 pm

Ian Brown grabbed the coveted best prepared speech award, while the hotly contested table topics trophy was lifted by our very own Mother Theresa…Kaveh Pourvand. Jackie Brennan managed to fight off audience distractions to win the best evaluator prize and the president’s award is on it’s way to Fremantle, Australia.

Ian Brown kicked off the prepared speeches with his speech entitled “booze blues”, the no #3 is about getting to the point and that he certainly did, he made us aware of the dangers of excessive alcohol. The governor of the Rugby Tavern might have wondered why the profits for the evening were down and why some of the Holborn members were drinking half pints. Hisham Al-Obaidi confessed to being a “drug dealer”, of the authorised kind – he told us about his life as a pharmacist and definitely managed to inform the audience, and if you can do that in an Ice Breaker well then you’re already starting to punch in the next division, a very confident first speech. Joga’s humorous impromptu speech gave us some insight into the world of Joga Bains and how to impress a lady on a first date with a bag of hot chips. He gave us a humorous account of his first meeting with his in-laws to be, or “outlaws” as he called them.

A concise round of speech evaluations followed the break. Michaela Talbot, Martin Mwaka and Anna Hayward all impressed, welcome back Anna Hayward after being away from Holborn for some time.

Table topics followed with our table topics mistress, Natalie Durmuller , an very interesting round of topics – with setting table topics, imagination is key, but who could have imagined Mother  Theresa being reincarnated in the Iranian embassy in London, beautiful ! Natalie in her task and being Swiss, managed to highlight the international diversity of Holborn Speakers – we had contestants from Australia, South Africa, Germany, Iran and of course Blighty, we also had a demonstration by Immo on how to shake hands with an Octopus. Congratulations to all the participants, Kaveh’s encounter with Mother Theresa in the Iranian embassy took the first prize.

Jackie Brennan did a great job of evaluating a signficant number of Table Topics contestants and in doing so kept to time, included her usual humor and gave good commendations and recommendations for each speaker, Jackie would be the eventual winner of the best evaluator award.

Graeme Conn our Toastmaster for the evening ran the meeting well – but to his own admission lacked a little energy, he was seen at the break discussing options with Hisham, the “authorised drug dealer”…  James Goddard produced a faultless effort as timekeeper for the evening and Anthony Robinson our grammarian gave us a master class in this very important discipline.  Joga Bains did a wonderful job as Sergeant-at-arms and helped a significant number of guests with their introductions. Ratan Lele stood in as General Evaluator for the evening, Ratan does what it says on the tin and more.

Dominique Fourniol closed off his first presidential duty for the year, by handing out the awards for the evening. His choice to hand his first president’s award to a 12 year old visitor (Georgie Street) from Freemantle, Australia was met with rapturous agreement from the Holborn audience.

A fantastic start to the toastmaster year, which was summarised very nicely in this thank you note from an international guest:

Dear Dominique

Thank you for welcoming us to your club last night. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the differences and similarities of the meeting. The greatest similarity was the warmth and friendliness from everyone and I hope we will be able to welcome some of your members visiting Fremantle Gateway Club in the future. Congratulations on your first night as president. Georgie is really thrilled with her award!

Best Wishes for a happy year

Gilly

Another action packed evening ended in the customary “networking” session downstairs in the comfort of the Rugby tavern. Last orders, we’ll see you next week.

Filed by: graemeconn | Category: Meetings
Thursday, July 15th 2010 11:32 am

The end of the Toastmasters year saw the last meeting for our President, Chris Boden. Chris opened the meeting with the style that has characterised his year as President of the club: a confident, warm and friendly introduction to the guests and members that set a great tone for the rest of the meeting.

Toastmaster for the evening was Nazia Soon, who gave her usual assured performance in the role. Nazia introduced her football theme for the meeting, inspired by the World Cup. Nazia reminded us of the similarities between football and Toastmasters, as both require dedication, practice and teamwork.

We were lucky to have four varied prepared speeches. Marvin Barrett gave his Ice-breaker speech, and gave us a chance to get to know him through some effective anecdotes and storytelling about his love for travel, new challenges, and his desire to become a life coach.

Graeme Conn delivered a passionate and insightful speech on “The Beautiful Game”, his views on the World Cup as a South African, the politics behind the games, and his belief that despite the success of the World Cup it may instead be the game of rugby that has the potential to transform South Africa in the future.

Sam Richardson delivered an excellent speech on his love of music, and how this has enriched his life and affected the choices he has made in his professional career.

David Jones delivered a speech from the advanced Public Relations manual. David attempted to give a press conference as a representative from BP, on the subject of the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. No easy task, yet David gave a confident and well informed performance and handled questions from the audience with great skill.

In the second half of the meeting Dominique Fourniol filled the role of Table Topics Master with a great set of World Cup related topics that gave participants the chance to improvise widely on topics including national stereotypes; the case for or against astrology; is it the winning or the taking part that matters most?; embarrassing moments; and is cheating ever justified? Well done to Dom for leading such a fun session, and to all the volunteers who took part.

Our General Evaluator was Natalie Ker Watson from London Meridian Speakers. Natalie wowed the audience with an excellent GE report delivered without the use of any notes! A remarkable feat that was very impressive to watch. A big thank you to Natalie for filling the role.

The meeting ended with the annual ritual of installing the club’s new President, as Chris Boden passed on the mantle to newly-elected President, Dominique Fourniol. Our thanks to Chris for his excellent job as President, and for his hard work in overseeing another highly successful year for Holborn Speakers.

We wish Dom well for what will no doubt be another year of challenges and achievements for Holborn Speakers.

Filed by: jgoddard | Category: Meetings
Thursday, June 17th 2010 5:05 pm

Chris Boden, the current club President kicked off the evening with a inspirational opening talk encouraging the audience by reminding us of the great benefits that come with joining toastmasters and doing a few speeches. Displaying great speaking and communication skills that he himself has developed through toastmasters.

Bode, this weeks toastmaster took over from Chris to MC the evening and guide us through the many speeches on the programme. Using a “food” theme he introduced each speaker with there favourite food. Bode quickly gave us a run down of the programme, introduced the functionaries and got the evening underway.

First speaker of the evening did an outstanding job of pulling off a last minute impromptu/advanced speech from the storytelling manual with only 15mins preparation. I can say outstanding because that was my speech and a year ago I would have never thought I would be able to complete an advanced speech with such little preparation and not use any notes at all. Chris returned to the front grabbing the audience from the opening of his speech with “I am a disaster” and gave us all a great demonstration of what talent toastmasters can pull out of you with his impromptu speech. Michaela, another experience toastmaster got the audience involved in her speech as she took us through a mentoring workshop. Explaining the benefits of having a mentor or being mentored in toastmasters.

Evaluations for the 3 speeches came from Graeme Conn and Ian Brown reminding us of the highlights of each speech and offering helpful feedback to each speaker.

After the evaluations Bode introduced the second impromptu speaking part of the evening by explaining to the audience that this is when “things get a little more juicy”, still not quite sure what he meant by that. James brought us a great table topics session with hot current event topics like compulsory voting, Gordon Brown, the oil slip in the gulf of Mexico, the IMF bailout, x factor judges and BA strikes.

Ratan Lele, the Indian ex-president accountant who loves an English breakfast began his topics evaluation with a great laugh from the audience when he tried to explain his love of English food rather than the English favourite Indian curry.

Christopher Hall began his general evaluation with some kind words for our award winning president. Being a very experienced toastmaster himself he gave very specific advice for a number of speakers through out the evening. Once again repeating what all visiting general evaluators say by giving praise for Holborn Speakers great reputation for being a very friendly club.

I look forward to the next meeting on the 18th May. To the guests, thank you for coming, it was a pleasure to have you and please feel welcome to join us again. Or better still contact Zoe Colbeck or Dominique Fourniol to find out more about club membership and how to join. They are ready to help.

Filed by: adriancarter | Category: Meetings
Thursday, May 13th 2010 4:31 pm

Chris gave his usual sparkling President’s introduction, drumming up enthusiasm not only for the night ahead, but also the upcoming International Speech and Evaluation Competition on the 16th of March.  Julie our Toastmaster announced:

“Holborn Speakers is about EXCELLENCE!!” she passionately proclaimed!

 James, who doubled as Grammarian, proceeded to take a novel approach to the Word of The Day by introducing us to ‘Anaphora’, a rhetorical device where the beginning of a phrase is repeated for effect as in “We came, we saw and we conquered!” – something a Toastmaster might use to great advantage in the pursuit of excellence.

 Our first Speaker of the evening was Kaveh with his 7th speech in the Competent Communicator manual. In his last speech, Kaveh spoke to us about Death and now he evidently sought to redress the balance by speaking about Life! Using examples from his job and striding about the stage with his expansive and rousing gestures, Kaveh gave an inspiring speech with great comic flair.

Next up was Ros, with a complimentary theme and a speech, also No. 7, entitled: “Happy Now?”. Ros made great use of statistics and her universally popular theme: happiness, to grip the audience’s attention. I felt her speech had a beautiful flow to it, charged with her unique brand of enthusiasm.

After these two fantastic speeches, we were treated to something a bit different from Nazia, our final Speaker of the evening. An extremely experienced member, Nazia has soared beyond the Competent Communicator manual to the Advanced Speaking manual and so we were treated to a lyrical reading of Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamlyn. Nazia commanded the stage with her usual warmth. 

And then, the moment everybody had been simultaneously hoping for yet praying would never actually arrive (if they were anything like me as a guest!): Table Topics!  Anthony was master of ceremonies and had cleverly devised a novel theme, inspired by his profession as a practitioner of the LAW. Defending the Indefensible!

Thus followed a most amusing set of “Lawyers” defending such popular members of society as fellow lawyers, door to door salesmen, accountants, politicians and CEOs of major national banks…Each “willing volunteer” bravely strode to the stage and many “willing volunteers” were guests, giving them the chance to experience more fully what it means to be a Toastmaster, to make a mini-speech and be evaluated on it. Joga was the man tasked with this job as Topics Evaluator, not an easy job at all, but he sailed through it with his sometimes questionable humour (only kidding Joga, your jokes are great!) and easy manner. 

The evening was gradually coming to a close, but before we finished, there was one more VIP to grace the stage: The GE, our very own Nigel. Nigel has been a member of Holborn Speakers since dinosaurs roamed the earth, well, a long time anyway, and this was clear in his evaluation, which was kind, fair, helpful and all-encompassing! Just what we needed to round off the evening.

That’s it from me for now. See you next week for more good old-fashioned fun (enhanced by the zest of competition)!

Filed by: Jay Surti | Category: Meetings
Monday, March 15th 2010 9:58 am

Ahh new beginnings, always good. Tonight we had three people doing their icebreaker speeches. Ian Brown, Sophia Siddiqui and James Goddard all did their first prepared speech to the club. Anthony Robinson completed the set giving us his number 5. And in a twist to the usual we managed to shave 30 minutes off the normal meeting length to accommodate a function in the room after us. There is nothing that Holborn Speakers can’t do!

Adrian as toastmaster made himself very popular by bribing the crowd with chocolate. Julie Bart kept time with with style.

For their speeches, Ian gave a musical themed account of his travels, Sophia told us she is Czechistani and James gave the secret to happiness. Anthony meanwhile gave tips on how to give the right impression with your body language.

To round off the abbreviated evening Bode had the topics speakers solving all of the world’s problems. Jeremy Robinson made a welcome return after being absent on Fathering duties to win best evaluator, Phillipe Brack also made a return from absence to get the best topic award and Ian took the gong for best speech. As always we had plenty of keen guests and as a compensation for cutting the meeting short, the Rugby Tavern were nice enough to put on a few plates of food downstairs. All good!

Just one more meeting left in 2009. See you on Tuesday the 15^th.

Filed by: chrisboden | Category: Meetings
Sunday, December 13th 2009 9:17 pm

Graeme stood in as President for Chris this week and started the meeting with an introduction to Toastmasters. He spoke about the beginnings of Toastmasters and how far it has come. There are now 12,000 Toastmasters clubs worldwide with a total membership of almost 250,000 people. He then passed the meeting over to the Toastmaster.

Joga, our Toastmaster for the evening, proudly displayed his facial hair that he is growing for the Movember charity event. After professionally handling some heckling from the crowd, he informed us that he would be happy to take donations and continued with the programme.

Catriona introduced the Timekeeper role by taking us back to the beginning of time with a Physics lesson that Steven Hawking would have been proud of. On returning to the timekeeper introduction she finished with “Green, Amber, Red. You know the drill!”

Jackie, our Grammarian, introduced the word of the day which was Mesmerise. After a brief discussion we decided that we preferred the British spelling to the American spelling.

Congratulations to Julie for completing her Competent Communicator manual with a great #10 speech. Julie spoke about her love of writing and words, and challenged us to do something creative ourselves.

Diana kick-started her advanced manual with an almost impromptu story about how people can change. Congratulations Diana and well done for stepping up and filling that speaking slot at the last minute.

Adrian, our Antipodean Topics Master chose a theme of winter in London. From “Where Do Leaves Go?” to “Mittens vs Gloves” and “Winter Xmas vs Summer Xmas” to “What is On Your Xmas Shopping List” it seems that Adrian is getting used to life here in London although he still pines for XMas in the sun.

Jenny and Ryan shared the Topics Evaluator Role and also shared the Best Evaluator award too, although Graeme kindly allowed Junior to bask in the glory of thinking that he’d won the Best Evaluator award for a while. For a few seconds anyway….until Junior noticed that it wasn’t his name on the award but Ryan’s. Oops. Graeme quickly took back the award and gave it to the intended recipient, Ryan.

There is no meeting next week. See you all on Dec 1st for the Holborn XMas Dinner.

Filed by: sramay | Category: Meetings
Wednesday, November 18th 2009 1:26 pm

Bode “Junior” Osenie proves he is the “goat” by taking the hotly contested Table Topics prize, while Peter Fruzzetti fights back the tears as he proudly lifts the best prepared speech trophy. Guy Smith racks up yet another first prize in the best evaluator discipline. Dianna Baynes nails her #10.

The comeback kid Kanishk Walia kicked off the prepared speeches and entertained us with “The Economics of dating”. Welcome back to Holborn, with a few tweaks that #2 could quite easily fit into a humorous speech contest. Craig Reid gave us all a Toastmaster’s history lesson, a clever and topical insight into his Toastmaster’s journey – inspired by his american cousin “John” . One of the key objectives of a speech, is to have a purpose and Paul Lau certainly left us thinking about funding of our retirement. Dianna Baynes opened herself up in delivering her #10, “Truth and Lies”. An extremely honest and pleasant account….She challenged us to take the Le Mans of Truth and Authencity challenges, the 24 Hour truth challenge, http://www.thepoweroftruth.com/24hourtruthchallenge.html. BUT the eventual winner was Peter Fruzzetti, “don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about”- Who could forget the first visual of an oversized and enlarged liver ? Looked like it had been out for a long boozy night with a certain Irish footballing legend, who had once graced the hallowed Old Trafford turf. Peter delivered an entertaining talk in the now all familiar “Peter Fruzzetti” style…Keep it coming ! A concise round of evaluations followed the break, Guy Smith once again proving that he is becoming an extremely competent evaluator, congratulations to Guy Smith.

Table topics followed with our table topics mistress, Julie Bart, following in the theme imposed by the ToastMaster of the evening, proverbs and quotes. Bode (junior) Osenie showed that he can win a table topic contest without speaking about the greatest of all time, the “goat” Michael Jackson, Bode certainly proved to be the “goat” tonight. Is blood thicker than water ? mmmm ! Thank you Julie for a great round of topics, congratulations to all the participants – especially the guests.

Our president Chris Boden an unlikely midwife, gave us news of the “birth” of the second Toastmasters club, spawned by Holborn Speakers club, now bursting at the seams and with a waiting list full of incumbent stars – much like the Australian ashes batting line-up.

Congratulations to Dianna Baynes on finishing her number 10 and therefore becoming a Competent Communicator !

Jenny Chung our Toastmaster for the evening, can only be likened to a prize “gunfighter”, during each handover she flashed out a reply, a faultless and professional display. Zadi Zable stood in as timekeeper and made every effort to ensure we were entertained during his numerous sorties up front. Femi our grammarian delivered a concise, yet upbeat report. Joga Bains stood in as General Evaluator and tried to pretend he was from a different club, even though he is part of the Holborn furniture… James Goddard introduced around 20 guests, almost introducing each guest by name – another smooth stint by a very new member to the club.

Another action packed evening ended in the customary “networking” session downstairs in the comfort of the Rugby tavern. Last orders, we’ll see you next week.

Filed by: graemeconn | Category: Meetings
Tuesday, October 27th 2009 12:26 pm

Holborn Speakers hits the mark again with another dynamite evening. Four speakers stepped up – Sarah Maloof told us animatedly about the perils of making big decisions, Paul Lau shared the secrets to success in business, Guy Smith gave a personal and uplifting story about one of his great challenges in life and finally Riad Hamada gave us his number 10 speech. It was a moving account of overcoming adversity using imagination and courage. Congratulations Riad on finishing your first manual and becoming a Competent Communicator!

The table topics had a decidedly business theme to them, but don’t think that stopped them from being a lot of fun. Craig gave us some interesting scenarios from buttering up the boss to firing an employee. We learnt that Zadi will be very gentle firing someone, but Kaveh is not to be trusted with juicy gossip! In the end though, the audience vote decided that lying and backstabbing wins out every time.

Anthony Robinson gave a very refined and well informed report on our grammar and the GE, David O’Neil, was both thorough and on time. A rare and precious quality in a general evaluation. Remember, contest night is next week, be there!

Filed by: chrisboden | Category: Meetings
Thursday, September 24th 2009 5:39 pm

At this week’s meeting we covered tips on how to continue to improve on skills acquired through the 10 competent communicator speech projects.  In order to present a speech that your audience will appreciate and enjoy, both content and delivery are important.  When you become familiar and comfortable with your material, you can concentrate on your delivery and building rapport with your audience, rather than worry about forgetting what you are going to say.  Preparation is key to a successful presentation.  A good way to help you prepare your content is chunking your material down into a mind map which you can also use as a stage prompt instead of notes  (if you need something to refer to when you are on stage).  The pictorial representation of the key points in your speech can sit on the floor allowing you to discretely look at it if you do lose your train of thought.  If you want to learn more, Tony Buzan is an expert on mind maps and has written several books on the subject.

Another useful tool when preparing your speech is to video your practise runs – instant feedback which will help you refine your performance! 

Watch this space for more tips.

Filed by: Jay Surti | Category: Meetings
Thursday, September 3rd 2009 2:42 pm