Archive for the ‘Public Speaking’ Category

The Division E competition took place at Donington Park racing circuit, which wasn’t a very good venue as it was difficult to find (we got sent to the wrong part of the circuit) and very cold inside their buildings slash sheds, but on the plus side we did get to look round the Formula One museum section.

Having previously won the club competition and area competition, I travelled down to Donington to take part in the Division E humorously speaking competition. Division E covers an area from Royal Leamington Spa and above – the North of England and Scotland.

I got flattened at the competition, I didn’t even place. This was disappointing as while I thought I was well beaten for first place, I thought I might have done enough to get in the top three. But live and learn, the next competition starts in March, and that one ends in the World Championship of Public Speaking.

Last month, I entered the Leeds City club competition of the Toastmasters humorous speaking contest. In a bit of a bookies upset, I won, which resulted in my proceeding on to the area level competition.

I had done quite a lot of preparation going in to it – Dinesh had volunteered to come over and evaluate it, I also did it in front of my parents and sister, as well as going to the other Toastmasters club based in Leeds, White Rose, to gather more feedback.

The day itself didn’t start too well though – having avoided the colds going around all week, I was finally struck down on the morning and when I phoned up to check what time I needed to be there, it turns out I was late! So I dragged myself out the door as soon as possible and made it half way through the introductions.

Luckily, my illness didn’t show through too much and in the end I must have done something right, as I ended up winning this one as well!

This means…

A) I’m currently the reigning champion for Area 15 (an area that covers South and West Yorkshire).

B) I proceed on to the division competition. I’m part of Division E, which is an area that covers the North of England and Scotland as well. That takes place in Donington later this month!

On Thursday, it was Leeds City Toastmasters “humorously speaking” competition. The club holds biannual competitions, one in the spring for motivational speeches and this one, for comedic ones – these then advance to the area competition and then continue moving on and up from there.

We started the evening meeting at Nawaab, an Indian restaurant on Wellington Street. It was good value at £11 for a three course meal, but my stomach certainly wasn’t too happy with what I put in it and the desserts were straight out of the freezer – packaging included and no time to thaw.

We made it to the competition just in time and I certainly didn’t fancy my chances – all three of the other speakers who had entered the contest were senior members of the club, one a former area governor who regularly speaks from the advanced manuals.

Somehow, I turned up with the victory though and now move onto the area competition in a few weeks!

Having really enjoyed Rob Lyon’s Skeptics talk on his book Panic on a Plate, I decided it would be a great topic to give a talk on at Toastmasters. Turns out it worked quite well, and I was lucky enough to pick up my second Best Speaker ribbon.

Recently, I made it down to the other “>Toastmasters group in Leeds, to see how it differed from Leeds City.

The answer is not a great deal – there were a few things that they did a little differently, but on the whole, it was the same enjoyable Toastmasters format. The biggest difference is that it is a much smaller club, with maybe around a dozen people there. This is understandable given they were only chartered in June, but is markedly different from Leeds City, the oldest club in The North, which will have around 30 people per meeting.

As they were somewhat short on roles, I was pounced upon on entering and ended up as timekeeper. It was a role I had been a bit nervous about doing, so giving it a go in a smaller club setting was perhaps a gentle introduction.

All in all, I’m not sure whether I will become a regular visitor. It would be a great chance to get round more roles and get more speeches it, but it does mean a time commitment of one evening every week.

For my second speech at Leeds City Toastmasters, the “Organize Your Speech” project, I spoke about drug decriminalisation.

It is something I have blogged about several times before because there really is no case for arguing that our current drug legislation is either helpful or sensible. I was a bit worried the talk wasn’t really coming together while preparing it, but I must have done something right as I ended up winning best speech of the meeting.

Edit: Five days after I had given this talk, the IDPC published their new report, “The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic”, so if the topic interests you, you may want to have a read. There is also a good blog post about it by Richard Branson.

At the most recent Toastmasters meeting, I took on my second role as Grammarian. This involved introducing the word of the day, which I had chosen to be jubilant (after giving a short rant about how we should abolish the monarchy), as well was watching out for good uses of grammar and interesting phrases.

I recently joined Toastmasters, a public speaking club which isn’t a cult (lets be clear about that from the start).

The most recent meeting of the club saw me take on a role for the first time. A role basically follows the definition of the word – each week the different roles be it chair (or Toastmaster if you will), Time Keep, Grammarian, Evaluators, etc are taken on by different people so you get experience doing lots of different things.

As Ah Counter, my job was to watch out for people using crutch words – these are words such as “well” that you might add to buy time in the middle of a sentence, or “ahs”, “umms” and “erms” – none of which are needed and can be replaced by a dramatic pause.

It was fun though sometimes I found myself so consumed in focusing on my specific part that I was almost missing what else was going on around me.

As many of you know, I recently joined a public speaking club and having recently taken on my first role, it came time for me to give my first formal speech – The Ice Breaker.

When you first join Toastmasters you have two programmes to work through – the Component Communicator and the Competent Leader. In the “CC” manual, there are ten speeches you have to give, each improving your speaking in one particular aspect. The first one, The Ice Breaker, is a 4-6 minute speech about yourself.

Despite having done quite a bit of public speaking at A-Soc, I was somewhat nervous before giving the talk. After all, I was speaking to a room of expert public speakers who would be picking up on every “erm” I let out (though the Ah Counter tells me I didn’t let out any, which is great) and every subconscious gesture.

I tend to do a bit too much hand clasping when nervous, so I intentionally decided to keep my hands down by my side. Unfortunately, this didn’t really get me anywhere as it just meant that my hands were hocked into my pockets instead. The ending clearly needed work as well, but as a first speech, I think I did OK and look forward to moving onto my next one.