Epsom Speakers Club meeting Monday 20 November 2017.

Well wasn’t it another great night at Epsom Speakers Club. We truly had an international flavour to this evening with many speakers on the programme with varied ethnic backgrounds, and a topics session that took us around the world. There was much laughter as well as learning, and it is best to improve your public speaking skills with a smile on your face. We learnt that feedback is the breakfast of Kings, and that we are all busy people having amazing weekends. Long may it continue.

The evening was kicked off again with Paul D, who also ran the warm up which was all about your weekend activities. He introduced the President who then introduced the Toastmaster for the evening. Charlie showed us how to run a polished evening and even explained his mistakes, which were not frequent. This was great for the less experienced Toastmasters as we can see that at Epsom, it is ok to make mistakes. In fact, I would encourage it, because we really do learn from our mistakes.  We had Justin as the ballot counter, Daniel as the videographer and Gillian as the timekeeper. Charlie had a great team behind him.

Onto the speeches and there was a great array of experience. Fresh from her topics win, Julia Belling gave us her Ice breaker. Remind me not to let her introduce me to her cat. Daniel gave us some good hints and tips about public speaking. Phoebus spoke about the power of fasting, which is very good for the body. And Peter went onto speaking how to change the world by changing yourself and how you look at food. It was a fun, serious and informative session. Daniel went onto win the best speaker award. Well done.

The evaluation session line up was full of very experienced Toastmasters. This showed us how to do it. We saw many great commendations, recommendations, and reminders of the speeches. Personally, I ask the evaluator to be as tough as possible, as I still have so much to learn. The evaluators were very empathetic and gave us all very considered and insightful recommendations. Penny evaluated Julia. Amanda evaluated Daniel. Doris evaluated Phoebus and David Goodman evaluated Peter. This session was excellent and really showed us the importance of evaluations. Evaluations are for everyone, not just the speakers and I hope you learnt much too. David won the best evaluator prize.

After the break we had a truly international session run by Lloyd. Everybody managed to get to the green light, which was excellent. We had the choice of two destinations, as the Topics master way of trying to decide where to go. Ian had the choice between Antarctica or Belgium. He chose beer, I mean Belgium. Anjana was asked to decide between Birmingham or Orkland. Anjana chose Birmingham in a rather sarcastic manner. Rohan was asked about Austria or Brazil. Rohan chose Austria because he liked the sound of music. Costa was asked about Athens or Budapest. It was a no brainer for Costa and he chose Athens. Justin was asked about Australia or the Bahamas. Justin chose Australia. Mark was asked about Amsterdam or Berlin. Mark chose Berlin because of its history. Elizabeth was asked about Aberdeen or Brighton. Elizabeth chose Aberdeen. And Norman was asked about Avignon or Barcelona. Norman chose Birmingham. It was an excellent example of how to reject a topic. Justin won the topics competition.

Next came the final two evaluations in the form of the topics master, Patrick. Patrick gave us another great evaluation for all the topics participants. The whole evening was then evaluated by Aishe, who also gave us a great insight on how he saw the evening go. I feel that everybody had fun, learnt much and I hope the meetings keep up to this level of engagement and enthusiasm. This is infectious and makes for a great learning experience. I certainly saw how much I need to improve.

I will leave you with a quote this week which was given to me by a friend. Yes I do have one!!!! ‘Yesterday, I was so clever I tried to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself’. A quote from Rumi.

Keep shining and see you on 4th December where Justin will be the Toastmaster.

Kind regards,

Peter. 🙂

El Presidente.