LEWISHAM SPEAKERS 18TH JULY, AN OLYMPIC EVENING.

What great evening we had.  Manoj was in great form.  Indeed he had dressed appropriately for his theme for the evening which was the Olympics.   The evening started off to a fine start by our Sergeant of Arms, Richard who also doubled up as our table topic evaluator for the evening.  He gave people a 2 minute warning, which helped get the meeting started on the dot. 

He then handed over to me, your president, who had the audacity to turn up in full riding gear.  What’s that about, I heard you wonder!!  Well I hope I proved a point that if your president can turn up to a fairly formal meeting set in a church on a Wednesday evening, pretending to Princess Anne, dressed in a riding out fit then it’s fairly good indication that we needn’t take ourselves too seriously and that we are in a safe environment when it comes to pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone.   If your president has licence to do it, then so do you!!

Phillip cantered us through the Warm Up swiftly, giving us good instructions on how we should respond. 

Vivienne was on the ball throughout the meeting with the timing.  Ringing that bell firmly when people went over time.  She was firm, fair and authorative.   I was staggered, Vivienne, Richard and Manoj worked together, as a great team making sure the meeting stayed on time. Which it did.  We finished spot on 9.30 pm.

Flavia one of our recently completed competent communicators, certainly showed her versatility, jumping in at short notice to be both the AH Counter, and Grammarian.   She spoke clearly, and  articulately, with great poise, and stage posture.  Always a pleasure to listen to Flavia.

What a cracking speech by Beverley, facing her Fears in life!  As Lucas pointed out she could have fooled us!  What fear?  She was competent, composed, and didn’t even use notes.  She made great use of Metaphors I thought.   Those people with the candle snuffer had better watch out!!  as this ladies  going places, and she won’t find any of those people in our club.   A great speech, well done Beverley for winning best speaker of the evening.

Chris was up next, again his use of self-deprecation humour is just so comical, its accompanied by such great body language, and eye contact too, which brings out the humour so well, and you just can't help but warm to him.  He thought PE lessons were a form of child abuse, tee hee!!  He is certainly looking forward to the Olympics and the fact it does serve a greater purpose for global unification, and improving our global relationships as a nation.   Unfortunately we won’t be watching Chris in the 100m final, but he did assure us that he will have a beer in one hand and watching it from his arm chair.

Serena gave a speech titled “Being Practical” I enjoyed this speech.  As usual Serena spoke to us with a lovely smile, a nice, pace, with plenty of pauses, so we could follow her story from start to finish.  I enjoyed her description of Lewisham, and she reminded me of the many things that I like too.  The birds singing, the beauty of the foxes that we see, the squirrels on the fences.  Who needs the country, when we have it on our door?  It all rung true for me.  Being practical was certainly the right move for Serena, and I identified with much of what she said.

Zhanna gave us an Educational speech, which is great because it all means we can learn something.   She gave us practical tips on how we can conclude our speech.   I thought she had good posture, and body language, using her hands meaningfully to make points.   Excellent sign posting too.  We knew what she was going to talk about, and then broke it down for us.  Our conclusions should summarise the main points, have impact, and should not take up any more than 5 to 10% of speech time. 

Lucas, Rosie, and Steve all gave very competent evaluations.  Our topic master Marcella took to the stage with great gusto and stage presence and took us through the TT session.   Didn’t we have some crackers!  Gabriel, cool calm and collected, made such a great point, that the Olympians should be role models for children.  Andy, our master stage dodger of the evening or not as the case proved to be.  He was in his element when he finally went to the stage and gave his speech.  Maureen, the gold medal was her dream.  She was cool, calm and collected with her speaking.  Brandon exuded real warmth from the stage, which in part came from his Irish accent.  There was a real character on stage, and we warmed to him.   Well done to all our other TT contestants too.  Well done to Maureen and Andy who were joint winners of table topics.

Steve gave us a good general evaluation of the evening, making the point we had stayed on time.  He whizzed through all the role holders of the evening who had not been commented on, and gave them all fair, and informative feedback.

We all gave a warm welcome to Natasha our latest member to our club, and we look forward to supporting her on her journey of becoming a competent communicator and leader.

Other Business

We were reminded of two points:-                             

1.        If anybody wants to assist with London Trustmasters, who are a newly formed club.  They are looking for experienced role holders to help them get off the ground.  They meet every 2^st and 4^th Wednesday of the month.  They are located at Northern Trust, a short walk from Canary Wharf.  If you are interested let me know, and I’ll put you in contact.

2.        Our next Committee Meeting for Committee Members only is scheduled for the 25^th July 2012.

 Well that’s it folk until the 1^st August.   Looking forward to seeing you all then.

Kind regards all Katy