Posts Tagged ‘Toastmasters’

Having taken on the role of Table Topics Master at last Thursday’s meeting of Leeds City Toastmasters, I got the chance to use my new TableTopics box. This is a cube full of conversation starter cards – take a look here. Most of them turned out to be really good topics and made for a very lively session.

On the last Sunday of September, we held the Area 15 contest for humorous speaking and table topics. The competition was tough and all competitors did a great job – congratulations to all that took part!

Despite having lost at the club contest, only to win through at White Rose, I somehow came out on top in humorous speaking. Two contestants go through to Division so Jamie will be joining me with a speech entitled “The TM 2 1 3 1” as well.

Chanaka once again stormed through the Table Topics and will be going to the division contest alongside Michael who also gave an excellent speech. I’m also pleased to say Michael took home the Toastmaster of the Year award for his ever-present hard work for the area.

As part of Leeds Business Week, the Leeds Toastmasters clubs came together to put on an event “Pitch Perfect”. It turned out to be a huge success with positive feedback from many of our participants and lots of interests in the clubs. Congratulations to Pierre and everyone else involved in bringing it together.

Earlier this month we had our club speech contest. Our Immediate Past President Jude begun with a speech entitled “When The Going Gets Tough”.

I followed with my speech “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Evaluating”.

But our winner was Michael J. Clarke with a speech entitled “Never Say No”.

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.

We’ve previously used Skype to allow Jane to attend White Rose Speakers meetings virtually while she is in Spain. This time, she connected in from the French Alps and hooked up to the projector, gave us a Giant Jane to provide a speech evaluation.

In August, I went to Goole for a speech workshop organised by Gillian. It was a highly informative day and should really raise the standards at contests in area 15 and 51. So much for any hope of retaining my trophy!

While there, I also took the chance to take some photos. Click for the full sized versions.

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.

Following the recent elections, we handed over to the new committee at White Rose and celebrated with a meal at Las Iguanas. The restaurant itself was a big disappointment – it took an hour and a half from us arriving to the food being served, but the company was good.