Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

For the first speech in the Public Relations advanced Toastmaters manual, you have to speak about Toastmasters. The project is a “good will speech” in which you promote public speaking, and thereby Toastmasters by making a few references to it in your introduction and conclusion.

I felt this was a bit of a lazy speech as a lot of it I’m quoting other people. But it was good enough to win Best Speaker on the evening, so can’t have been too bad.

While on Jersey last month, we went to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Centre. I took a few videos while I was there. First, some otters playing.

Second, a mother gorilla and baby feeding.

Last month, Leeds City Toastmasters teamed up with Leeds Speakers’ Corner to put on “Toastmasters in the Park”. That is basically what LSC do anyway, but with more Toastmasters there. Thanks to Chanaka for being Toastmaster and John for his excellent speech. Myself, John W and Andrew spoke as well, as did a few members of the public!

A video of the event is also available below.

This is my tenth speech from the Toastmasters Competent Communicator manual, “Inspire Your Audience”. The speech doesn’t start until a minute in to the video.

Here are some videos from our trip to Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

Lemurs. The lemur doesn’t do anything except lick itself, but another one does climb onto the house.

A tiger. You can see it breathing.

A wallaby. Some children try to pet it before it runs away.

I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Helsinki Sea Life Centre. It had some cool animals in it, and you did get to walk through a tunnel with sharks swimming over your head, but it was fairly small and over quite quickly.

The first photo is a shoal of piranhas. They just sit there waiting for something to happen; it’s quite unnerving. I took a video.

Finally, someone has fixed Alanis Morissette’s song so that it actually is ironic.

For my 8th project at Toastmasters, I presented a talk on homeopathy.

I can totally accept that as a last resort, I would drink the liquid from elephant dung. It’s a great survival technique. But here is my question. How did the first person figure that out? What were they doing that lead to that discovery?

This video was taken at the White Rose Speakers club level contest of the 2013 Toastmasters International Speech Contest. I had already won at Leeds City Toastmasters, so this was just a showcase, but I went on to win the Area level contest as well.