Beings

A very full evening of variety, audience engagement and entertainment delighted members and visitors this evening. Toastmaster for the night was Graeme who provided professional leadership of the meeting and guided us through a full programme and kept to time. Starting with a cheerful Karen and her bagful of Table Topic items, the meeting was well warmed up for the first formal speech. 

One of four tonight, Layeeq's speech was entitled 'Beings'. Layeeq tricked the audience with a well prepared picture show, into animal lovers but then questioned our desire to eat them! His string of facts about environmental and nutritional issues were strongly delivered and emotionally charged. Your pet lamb is no longer in danger...

Our second presentation was from Christine with the title 'A life well lived'. Christine showed particular skills in story-telling in a thoughtful and touching manner but lightened by the use of humour. Her speech was well delivered by connecting with the audience using good eye contact and voice modulation which showed sincerity and increased the interest level.

Emma presented a speech entitled 'The true cost of compliance' which encouraged the audience to sign her 'petition' calling for a more sensible approach to Health and Safety laws. She put forward a compelling argument using earthquake risk as an example. Emma's strengths were her eye contact with the audience, vocal variety which caught peoples attention and effective gestures to draw them into the topic.

The second speech was from Carolyn 'Giving it a go – lessons I've learned'. Carolyn used props from her own hobby showing progress from the beginning to expert level – and how she got there. The audience learned not only how to become good at something by giving it a go and following some steps, but certainly how to engage an audience! The personal story added real value to the topic.

There were some excellent evaluations. The Table Topics evaluators Elizabeth and Peter gave friendly and engaging feedback with good recommendations along with examples. Amy's evaluation of Layeeq's speech was expertly delivered with humour and a solid list of commendations and recommendations. Craig noted a range of skills used by Christine and made some recommendations that would help listeners who are thinking about their next presentation. Steve evaluated Emma's speech, noting the use of effective visual aids and how to improve them and highlighting the very good speech structure. Jan evaluated Carolyn's speech. She picked up on just about every feature that made this an excellent presentation. She did note something that would apply to many of us though – more practise is great!

Award recipients this evening were:
Best table Topics speech – Carol
Best Speech – Carolyn
Best Evaluation – Jan
Best Contribution - Craig