Fooling Around and creating Mischief!

When Philip suggested to have a meeting where our members would just turn up, pick a role out of a hat and perform a role that they pulled out of a hat,  I thought he was playing an April Fools Joke in March,  but little did I know what he had in store for us on April 1st. 

First, Philip kicked off the meeting with a thorough explanation of what was to happen, then there was a period of organized chaos as we picked our roles, and prepared ourselves for the evening.

Anne Barrett, got us off to a great start as our Sergeant at Arms,  welcoming us all to the meeting,  ensuring that we all had our mobiles on silent,  and that we knew where the fire exits were.  Job well done.

Paul Mclean stepped into my shoes as President for the day, grasped the task with real enthusiasm.  He warmly welcomed us all to the meeting,  explained to us why he joined toastmasters,  and invited our guests to introduce themselves to the club.   A future president maybe...

Flavia had picked the role as Toastmaster,  which meant that we could all have a sigh of relief!!   She did a fantastic job and putting us all at ease,  explained the agenda and the purpose of the evaluation sheets to our guests, and steered us through the evening. 

Verna, enthusiastically took up the role of Warm Up leader,  asking for our thought on having a "Positive Mental Attitude". An excellent topic for the audience, and this meeting in particular!

David,  our timekeeper - reminded us about the importance of keeping time, and to keep an eye on the lights,  while he was keeping his eyes on the clock!  

Ali was our grammarian, and presented us the word of the day "Mischievous" with a cheeky glint in his eye.  He encouraged us all to cause a bit of mischief and used the word during the course of the evening.  It was a great choice of word for the evening!

The only people that had a chance the prepare for their roles were Paul and Philip who were making prepared speeches for the evening. 

Paul made a confident icebreaker speech, where he introduced us to his world at Transport For London,  and his day to day challenges around printing, scanning and photocopying.  For those of us who thought that TFL was only about buses and tubes,  it gave us a tiny insight to what is going on behind the scenes.  

It was a great start, and I look forward to seeing Paul grow in confidence and as a speaker as he progresses through the competent communicator manual. 

Philip,  provided us with a speech from the Storytelling Manual - "Choppy Waters" full of action and adventure,  running through time, running through the audience, linking being at the helm of a boat,  to being at the helm of our club.   The message that I took away from his speech was,  Whatever direction the wind blows,  we are all in the same boat together!

Our speech evaluators Max and Richard, provided some valuable feedback to our speakers, in their own unique way - Max calm, measured and incisive contrasted well with Richard's humorous and animated approach - both working to encourage the speakers to continue to improve. 

Our Table Topics Master, David  took a break from his job as timekeeper to run our Table Topic's session.   The topics for the evening stuck to the theme as Ann, Richard, Verna and our guests Lorraine, Kiki, and Ola gave us their thoughts on pranksters and other aspects of April Foolery!    Once again it was one of our guests,  Lorraine who stole the show and the prize for best Table Topic!

To round off the meeting Katy our Divisional Governor, had picked up the role as GE, to give her evaluation of those who had not been evaluated,  and the evening as a whole.  The main takeaway was that, we could have made better use of the time a the start of the meeting to allocate the roles, to allow for more preparation - however overall,  it was a great idea and good to see everyone get involved. 

From my point of view, it was great to see us working together and adopting a positive mental attitude to making the "GrabBag" meeting a success.  We have some outstanding leaders in our club,  and I am sure that meetings like this have a part to play in building our team spirit and keeping the club moving full steam ahead!!

Last week may have been half term, but not at Lewisham Speakers Club.

Richard opened the meeting with his usual energy.

Then I as acting President, told how drawing on the Leadership skills expounded by Toastmasters assisted me to rescue an accountancy meeting when a speaker didn’t arrive before welcoming, Paul and Davidde who are shortly to be enrolled as members and our guests Robin and Berta plus Verna who arrived later.

Then Flavia as Toastmaster took over and  introduced her theme of ”The Ghost of Valentine Past” admitting that she wanted Obama to her Valentine, for a great meal and very large bouquet of flowers, though not sure if Michelle would be happy.

David our warm up leader, asked how we liked to unwind and Red Wine and TV are both popular.

Anne as Grammarian introduced the word of the Romantic, and in her report complimented our speakers on evocative phrases and started he journey as a Leader as did Paul who took on the role of Timekeeper and fortunately did not need to use the bell.

We then had three speeches all based on personal stories which always give a speech power,

Ali, giving his Icebreaker, “Is Your Dream Too Small” shared how he had big dreams so was laughed at, but he had the last laugh as his dreams came true, and as the speech went on he came more relaxed and used good body language and encouraged us to have big dreams and be laughed at!

Max, whose ideal was Cleopatra  presented “Getting Into Trouble” involved us all by asking how many of us had been victims of crime, before recounting three occasions when playing football he was encountered problems but learnt how to overcome by standing his ground and was respected.

Finally, Habibu presented his sixth speech “Film Creation and Effects” explained how his favourite films when younger featured superheroes, though Toastmasters and others now fulfil that place, but he recalled how he was upset by a horror type film and asked us all not to overload childrens senses.

Our evaluators, Didier, Richard and Chris, largely built our speakers up, complimenting them on an easy to follow structure, use of questions to draw us in and the use of pauses for effect.

After the break John led the Topics session involving largely based around Birthdays included Julie on birthdays recounted how she still has gifts from hr son, Robert on being President for the day became a politician and gave us all the day off, Robins ideal birthday was a surprise 30^th party leaving much to the imagination, proving that less can be more.

After evaluating the Topics, Jenny as General Evaluator complimented everyone whilst wanting more encouragement from our evaluators before I presented the awards to Max, Chris and Robert.

All that remains is for me to thank everyone who took part and encourage everyone who can to take part in the Speech and Evaluation Contest on 4 March 2015 as this could be the start of an amazing journey, ending in The Tower Hotel and Las Vegas for the best speaker in South England.

Philip 

The Theme Was Teamwork!

Last week's meeting was as fun as ever.

Richard was our Toastmaster for the evening and did a great job at leading the meeting and keeping us to time.

For our warm up, we were asked to all introduce ourselves and say what we would be having for dinner later, which was an easy question to help break the ice.

Judith explained the role of the grammarian and then gave us the word of the day, 'harmony' for us to try and drop into our speeches and evaluations.

Our first speaker, Suresh, tried to make us all live happier lives by suggesting we should accept people as they are, to accept yourself as you are and that opposite values can actually be complimentary. He used persuasive language and guaranteed us a happier life if we follow these rules.

Our second speaker, Robert, warmed up with a sing along and then told us all about John Brown and how he tried to abolish slavery in America. He used tactics that were certainly not peaceful to try and accomplish this goal, including inciting the slaves to rebellion and killing slave supporters. This led to him being convicted and sentenced to be hanged. Some scholars see John Brown as wicked, evil and a mad man but others see him as an anti-slave icon.

Our third speaker, Jenny, spoke about how we should embrace people from all cultures and how her family has grown to include people from various different countries, including her Indian husband. She told us how her father used to hoist up the English flag at Christmas time and her family were previously not very accepting of other cultures. There were clashes between members of her family from different cultures getting married and hostility that went as far as obscenities being shrieked through letterboxes by the parents. Now, however, her family have become much more accepting and her father now hoists up the United Nations flag up at Christmas time. Jenny also used the word of the day, harmony, as an added bonus.

Then we had our 3 evaluators, David, Chris and Flavia, who were introduced by our Toastmaster, Richard, who casually slipped in the word of the day 'harmony'.

David evaluated Suresh, saying he did very well overall with a very interesting and persuasive speech but could perhaps move around the stage a little less as it can be distracting or use the movement to go alongside the flow of the speech. Chris commented on Roberts 'awesome voice' that got us all singing along and is so clear and well projected. Flavia talked about Jenny's amazing ability to paint pictures in her speeches and engage with the audience.

Max then led us in the table topics centered around working in teams, where we had some guests and new members speak up. One of our guests, Vena, used the word of the day whilst talking about the importance of working harmoniously in teams. Serena, another guest, also slipped in the word of the day when talking about the importance of conservation, looking after our wildlife and being harmonious with the environment. Flavia thought it best to avoid working in teams altogether as the other team members can be hard to work with and we would be better off being self employed! Judith spoke about how she doesn't work in a team as she is the only one in her office that does her job and has little interaction with her boss, but this is how she would like to keep it!

Habibu then gave us all some great advice about how we can all improve on our table topics, including body language and relaxing our arms when we speak instead of clasping them.

Judith then gave the grammarian report, highlighting some of the great creative language some of the speakers had been using and how well the speakers articulated themselves. Also the use of the word of the day 'harmony' several times throughout the meeting, which is quite a rare occurrence.

Richard gave us an 'um' counter report, where he highlighted the amount of times people had used 'um's' in their speeches, some of us had quite a few! He explained how we could try and avoid using this filler word in future.

We were then given a thorough general meeting evaluation, saying what a great meeting it was and how well all of our speakers and evaluators did. Also, how well set up the room was with the Toastmaster flag at the front and all the required equipment, leaflets etc out and ready to use.

:)

Judith