Meeting Report: 11th May 2010 by Adrian Carter
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.
