Humorous Speech and Table Topics contest, 13th September 2017

It was another fantastic night with the long-awaited 2017 Excalibur Speakers Humorous Speech and Table Topics contests! 

Our President, Katja van Koten, opened the meeting with some innovative exercises involving imagining being in various scenarios and clapping hands and shouting. By the end, we were all truly warmed up. 

Then she handed over to the Humorous Speech Contest Chair, Simon Cooper. He confirmed with our Chief Judge (and amazing Area Director) Cat Kipling that the judges had all been briefed and that everyone knew what they were doing.  

Nick and Suzi were timing the meeting. 

And then the Humorous contest was underway! 

First up Marc Lottig told us about his shopping trip and some rather interesting customer experiences he had enjoyed. The 2nd contestant was Lynne who told us a story of her Sicily holidays and 110 mosquito bites. Then, we listened to Freddie who explained to us the importance of gentleman’s underwear. The 4th contestant was David West who had a wonderful time as a salesman for Brexit Motors, while explaining the future of self-driving cars. And the final contestant was Chinkata Okpara, who told us about his love for red wine and all the unexpected places it had taken him. 

Humorous Speech Contestants with Certificates of Participation

After the Humorous Speech Contest, we had a 10 min break when our Chief Judge Cat and ballot counters Monika and Brian counted the votes.

  

After the break, Katja took over responsibilities for being Contest Chair for the Table Topics Contest. Again, we had 5 contestants -  Chinkata Okpara, David Lennon, David West, Lynne Cantor and Freddie Daniells. The question asked was: What is it that you speak passionately about? 

Table Topics Contestants with Certificates of Participation

After the votes were collected and the Chief Judge left the room, Katja ran a quick session of Table Topics.  

Then, Cat announced the winners. They were: 

A very happy David Lennon with Chief Judge Cat

For the Table Topics: 

1st place - David Lennon 

2nd place - Freddie Daniells 

3rd place - Chinkata Okpara 

Young David West wins another Excaliburgers contest!

For the Humorous Speech: 

1st place - David West 

2nd place - Freddie Daniells 

3rd place - Lynne Cantor 

And then, in true Excalibur style, we all went to celebrate in the pub! 

Both 1st and 2nd place winners will be going forward to represent the club at the Area contest. The Area contest will take place on Wednesday 20th September at The Plough, 27 Museum Street, London WC1A. The contest will begin at 7pm Please come along to support our contestants if you can. 

Meeting Report 23rd August

“If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all” by Billie Holiday was the opening line for our meeting on 23^rd of August. Our President Katja used this quote in her introduction and inspired us to find our own strength and aspire to excellence.

Then, our Sergeant at Arms Brian greeted the guests and we proceeded with the meeting.

Our Toastmaster Monika, who is also our VPPR, gave us a little introduction on how quickly it is to find a piece of information on Facebook, LinkedIn or Google and how that can help with getting to know people better.

Then, Monika introduced the Timekeeper who was Marcin. He gave us a very precise overview of his role.

The subsequent part of the meeting was a bit unusual. We welcomed again Brian to run a Table Topics session, but instead of questions, we were requested to tell a story with each Table Topic speaker adding more detail to it. What a great fun it was! And a very bizarre story… 😊😊

Brian started the game with saying that we see elephants on the street. Then, he called Freddie to the stage, who explained that these elephants must be here because of too much alcohol and/or drugs… Freddie’s imagination carried us very far away, and his evaluator Katja mentioned that it was perhaps too much information. Our 2^nd Table Topics speaker was our guest Tom. He spoke about the jet engine. Firstly, it landed on the road, and the next second Tom was in it, flying. Ian commended Tom on taking on the story, especially that the 1^st speaker left it at a turning point. With the jet engine, Lynne ended up in America and admired the Statue of Liberty. Lynne was evaluated by Errol who mentioned that it was a bit theatrical. Then, being in the US, Tadija took us to a visit to Donald Trump. And what a visit it was! Marcin, who evaluated Tadija, really enjoyed the plot. Finally, Marc finished the story by bringing up the LSD drugs mentioned in the beginning. He was evaluated by Giovanna who mentioned that she would like to see more flow to the story.

After the Table Topics session, we moved to the prepared speeches section of the meeting, where we had 3 speaking slots.

Our first speaker was Tadija. His speech was entitled “Paradise” and it was project 2 from the Storytelling manual. Tadija told us about his childhood and how as a little boy he was in a paraside after his dad gave him a box of Swedish chocolates. It was also Tadija’s first speech in our club, so well done! And thank you for sharing this fantastic memory!

The 2^nd speaker was Errol who did a project 2 from Special Occasion Speeches. Error spoke in praise of a very special person- his father. The speech was entitled “The Spirit of a Leader” and was full of beautiful words such as: “the decisions you make as a leader have an effect on those who you lead”. It was a truly heartening and inspiring speech. Thank you!

Our final speaker was Marc who told us “How dangerous it is” to go on holidays to South Africa and watch animals. Marc wanted to teach us that observing animals’ behaviour raises questions about humans. It was a very thought-provoking speech delivered as project 4 from Humorously Speaking manual.

Next, we moved to evaluations!

Our first evaluator was David A. who evaluated Tadija. David mentioned that he loved the stories about childhood and he would like to hear more detail especially about Tadija’s home.

The 2^nd evaluator was Ian. Ian commended Errol on the use of anecdotes, but mentioned that Errol’s voice could have been more powerful in some places.

The final evaluator was Lynne. Lynne said that she liked how Marc’s speech made us think, but she suggested that he should think about rearranging the order of his stories used in the speech.

The open feedback session was led by Giovanna and was not only full of great comments, but also very warm because of Giovanna’s smile!

The last part of the meeting was the general evaluation from our guest from Data Science Speakers Sayara. She gave us a lot of very insightful comments about the meeting.

Finally, Katja handed in the awards for Best Evaluator and Best Table Topic Speaker to Lynne (a double winner!) and for the Best Speaker to Errol. Congratulations!

And then, we went to the pub 😊

PS Next meeting is 13^th Sept and it’s a contest night! Don’t miss it 😉

Meeting Report 9th August

Our meeting on 9th of August was a bit on the fly! Or at least Freddie Daniells convinced us to that truth in his energetic introduction! He also helped us imagine the agendas that were stuck in the traffic with our President Katja van Koten, and therefore, slightly late.

Then, our SaA Brian Skelton explained the logistics and introduced the guests: Andrew, Dmitri and Branko.

Branko was visiting us for the second time, and this night he volunteered to help us by being a Timekeeper. And what a great job he did providing us with detailed, yet concise, reports of the timings.

The next part of the meeting was Table Topics run by Monika Swiderska. The theme was inspired by her not-so-lucky adventure, when her backpack was stolen a couple of days earlier. The first speaker was David West who was asked what would he do if his bag was stolen. However, David has an incident of his own as he fell on the slippery steps just before the meeting and he told us about that. Marcin Tolysz evaluated David and suggested that he could focus more on the story. Then we had Carol West telling us about one object she can’t live without. She explained us how she needs to monitor her insulin levels and that her medical monitoring device helps her with that. Carol was evaluated by Brian Skelton. Our third speaker was Lynne Cantor, who tried to convince the audience (a board of managers) that the missing laptop and missing data is not a big issue as everything was backed up in the cloud. Bob Fergusson commented that he loved how Lynne lead this table topic with dialogue. The next speaker was Tadija Popovic telling us that if he had had something stolen, he would probably drink vodka. Evaluation for Tadija came from our VPE Hannah Van Der Deijl. The fifth speaker was Cat Kipling who was asked about the form of punishment for the thief. Cat explained that he or she should rebuild the stolen laptop. She was evaluated by Ian Brown. The final table topics speaker was our guest Dmitri. Dmitri told us that we should not put all eggs in one basket if we want to avoid having all belongings stolen. The evaluation came from Chinkata Opara, who commended Dmitri on doing a table topic during his very first Toastmasters meeting.

The first speech was delivered by Ian Brown. It was a mesmerising story about Julius Caesar entitled “Roman Candle”. We learned a lot about Cesar’s life and re-lived the history. Ian brilliantly brought this story to life and completed project 5 from Storytelling manual.

Then, we took part in a workshop by Brian Skelton, who taught us how to make our party special by making fantastic and unusual fruit decorations. Master Chef Brian invited our President Katja to try making the decorations herself, which turned out to be less easy than we all thought!

The evaluation of the first speech was given by Bob Fergusson. Bob commended Ian for his changes of pace that helped to deliver a story, but suggested he should start with more action. After a very lively and powerful evaluation deliver by Bob, we listened to Chinkata Opara who commented on Brian’s speech. Chinkata said that the room was enthralled by this very interesting and unusual speech. Chinkata recommended that Brain could lifted the food up, so everyone could see it and perhaps explain more why certain things are so difficult to do.

Next, we had a fantastic and very insightful Open Feedback session led by our VPE Hannah Van Der Deijl. She not only facilitated it smoothly, but also provided a lot of observant and helpful comments herself.

The role of General Evaluator was filled by our Area Director Cat Kipling. She mentioned that it was her third Toastmasters meeting on the day, but she also highlighted that all the meetings were really good. Then, she evaluated all the roles of the evening.

Lastly, Hannah gave us a bit of an update on VPE housekeeping with the hint that she would like to explain her plans for this year in a speech.

Finally, it was handed over to Katja, who called Lynne to the stage to hand in the best table topic speaker award. And after that, we went to the pub 

Meeting Report 26th July

26th of July was yet another exciting meeting! It started with warm words from Katja van Koten, our President who then handed over to the Toastmaster Brian Skelton. The theme that Brian chose was very thought provoking as he asked a question what are we aspiring to this Toastmasters year...

Nick Westall was the Timekeeper and did a brilliant job measuring the times of table topics, speeches and evaluations.

The table topic session was prepared by our Immediate Past President Lynne Cantor. Her choice for the table topic session was to move away from direct questions and challenge us with themes. The speakers were presented with an object and tasked to describe it without using its name or words closely associated with it. The first one to try this innovative game was Suzi Fish who was talking about dental floss without actually using the phrases “dental floss” or “teeth”. She was evaluated by David West. The next speaker was Arnold Mannering talking about a “creature” and jumping on a stage as he was trying to portrait a rabbit! Arnold was evaluated by Simon Cooper. The 3rd speaker was Marc, a guest to our club. He spoke about wonderful Christmas time trying to link it with his key word “snowflake”. Carol West was asked to give comments on this table topic. Last but not least was our guest Lin who spoke about smart and athletic animals- dolphins. She was evaluated by Marcin Tolysz.

There were 3 prepared speeches that night.

The first speaker was Monika who presented her Master’s project. The speech was from Technical Presentations manual and was about 3D Environmental Impact Assessement. Monika tried to explain how 3D maps can help to communicate environmental data to the wider audience.

The next speaker was Freddie Daniells. In an amusing speech entitled “Below the belt” he told us about the complexities a gentleman faces in choosing the appropriate underwear for the right occasion. It was a 1st project from Humorously Speaking manual.

Then we heard from Chinkata Opara who told us a story about a man and his 3 wives. The story was about how the traditional way of living can clash with the modern ones. The moral was very thought-provoking and perfectly met the objectives of the project as it was project 3 The Moral of the Story.

In the evaluations part, Monika got a very detailed and insightful feedback from Cat Kipling. Cat mentioned that Monika understands the subject, but suggested that she should work on better structure and presentation to help convey the message.

The second evaluator Marc Lottig pointed that Freddie used slightly absurd observational humour and funny exaggerated stories that worked very well for this project. He recommended that Freddie should spend more time on preparation.

Chinkata was evaluated by Ian Brown. Ian commended Chinkata for his complete storytelling, humour and rich stream of narrative. As a recommendation, he mentioned that Chinakata could use more facial expressions.

Our usual Open Feedback session was led by Sue Mannering. Sue brilliantly gave the audience the opportunity to comment on the given speeches and for the speakers to benefit from the feedback of the wider audience!

General Evaluation was done by Sonia Araujo. She has summarised the performance of all roles that have not been yet evaluated giving them constructive feedback to allow their futher development.

Then, our President Katja handed out the awards:
Best Speaker: Chinkata Opara
Best Table Topic Speaker: Arnold Mannering
Best Evaluator: Marc Lottig

The last part of the meeting was a speech from Simon Cooper to celebrate Lynne’s DTM. Well done Lynne! :)

:)

Meeting Report 12th July

12th of July was the very first meeting with Katja van Koten as the President of Excalibur. She told us a story about her mum’s recent stroke to remind us how lucky we are to have our voice and how we should aspire to excellence in communication.

After this powerful introduction, our SaA Brian Skelton explained logistics of the venue and introduced guests.

The night was led by Marcin Tolysz who was Excalibur’s Toastmaster for the first time. He chose a word of the day “Why” which related to the theme of the meeting:: Why are we Toastmasters? The question was truly thought provoking! Well done, Marcin!

Our Timekeeper was Brian Skelton and his reason for joining Excalibur was to become a better speaker in order to deliver an amazing TED talk and help his other club Kings Speakers.

Table Topics were prepared by David Lennon and this time we spoke about the weather. What a British topic it was! The first table topics speaker was Hannah with one word to describe British weather, evaluated by Chinkata Opara. Then, we had Monika Swiderska who advised that if you are tired of the weather in your current place, you should move out. She was evaluated by Simon Cooper. David West spoke about the difference between accuracy and forecasting and was evaluated by our guest Jayanthiny Kangatharan. Then, we listened to Siergei who described how weather affected his mood and his evaluator was Freddie Daniells. We also heard from Suzi Fish who loves hot weather. Irene Bradshaw evaluated Suzi. Finally, Carol West told us why she likes wind and rain with some evaluation comments from Tony Winyard.

There were 2 prepared speeches that evening.

The first one was delivered by Tony Winyard who spoke about his amusing adventures as a DJ in Jakarta. This was a project from the Entertaining Speaker manual. The second speaker was our guest Jayanthiny. She ran a Panel Discussion with Freddie Daniells, Carol West and Irene Bradshaw in it. The questions she asked were about their professional lives and what they learned from their jobs.

Monika Swiderska evaluated Tony’s speech mentioning that his vivid vocabulary and images could be enhanced by more dialogues. Chinkata Opara evaluated Jayanthiny. He mentioned that she could improve the logistics (especially speaking with the Timekeeper in advance), but overall, she asked great questions.

Freddie Daniells run the Open Feedback session, which was full of insightful comments.

Finally, we received constructive comments on the meeting from Simon Cooper, who was General Evaluator.

Then, we enjoyed the rest of the evening in the pub 😊

Excalibur Past Presidents Meeting 14th June 2017

Our resident Lawyer and SAA for the evening, Simon Cooper, called our Excalibur Presidents Meeting to order and introduced our esteemed current President, Lynne Cantor who set the energetic tone for the evening.  Lynne asked what would we say to a 19 year old Excalibur as we celebrated our 19^th birthday with cake! Googled responses included:

1.      Speak less, listen more - the key to a good Evaluator

2.      Be yourself - those who matter will love you, and those that don’t, don’t matter!

3.      Quality reigns over quantity– and quality is what we have focused on all year

Celebrating 19 years of Excalibur

Ten of our Past Presidents were present for the evening;-  Bob Nisbet DTM (2002-3), Rod Sloane (2004-5), Bob Ferguson (2005-6), Simon Bucknall (2008-9), David Adams (2010-11), Carol West DTM (2011-12), Simon Cooper (2012-13), Andrew Bennett DTM (2013-14) who joined us by Skype!, Cat Kipling (2014-15), Immediate Past President Freddie Daniells (2015-16), plus Current President Lynne Cantor (2016-17).  Additionally we welcomed two very notable committee members David West and David Sellman.

From L to R:- David Adams, David West, Simon Bucknall, Andrew Bennett (on screen), Rod Sloane, Bob Ferguson, Carol West, Bob Nisbet, Lynne Cantor, Simon Cooper, Cat Kipling, David Sellman. 

Our 6 guests, including our President’s other half to find out what Lynne had been up to all year!, were warmly welcomed along with our newest member, Ian Brown.

Incoming Area Director Cat Kipling was our superb Toastmaster of the evening seamlessly moving between the different segments and expertly and knowledgeably introducing each speaker.

                                     

Bob Ferguson hosted the ‘Excalibur Shopping Channel’ Table Topics session where speakers were encouraged to persuasively sell us the benefits of different products. Carol West persuaded us to buy Robo-Mow, Guest Tadija Popovic sold us the Belty Automatic Belt, David Sellman sold us the Massage Me Vest, and Rob Sloane sold us an Ice Cream Lock winning the Best Table Topic in the process!

                                   Rod Sloane - Best Table Topic

Bob Ferguson, who during his Presidents reign introduced Instant Evaluations to stop Table Topics overrunning! We all love him for that!! He encouraged David Lennon, Janet Tarasofsky, Ian Brown and David Adams to focus not just on performance skills recommendations, but to also share a tip on how to improve, and to highlight good sales techniques in their feedback.

Our first prepared speaker was Freddie Daniells, speaking from The Humorously Speaking manual #5 The Humorous Speech “My Financial Bailout”, about his time as a Stockbroker when he got arrested in Jersey by 17 policemen …..he claims he had only had one drink!  Yeah right! President Elect Katja van Koten gave a structured evaluation.

Our second speaker was District 91 Speech Contest Winner Simon Bucknall, giving us his second speech for the World Championships in Vancouver “Twelve Sophomores & An Englishman” which led him to be Best Speaker of the evening.   David West was his thoughtful evaluator.

                                  Simon Bucknall - Best Speaker 

Lynne Cantor, our final speaker,  fed back the results on her year long High Performance Leadership (HPL) Programme “Excalibur, A Club of Excellence” with specific examples and anecdotes around our members!  Concluding that we are a bigger, stronger more focused club. 

By delivering this speech Lynne completed her HPL and her Advanced Leadership Silver and, having previously completed her Advanced Communicator Gold, has achieved the accolade of Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM).  She also achieves a Triple Crown by completing three awards in one year – congratulations Lynne! 

Cat Kipling Congratulating Lynne Cantor on her DTM and Triple Crown

Andrew Bennett, beamed in via Skype, was Lynne's expert evaluator and won Best Evaluator with his defined criteria of how he was going to evaluate and demonstrated with specific examples.

                     Andrew Bennett, on Skype, winning Best Evaluator

Prepared Suzi Fish facilitated the Open Feedback session for the speeches, expertly managing the commendations and recommendations from the audience and always ending on a positive note.  

Monika Swiderska ably and succinctly kept us to time.

The general evaluation was expertly delivered by Bob Nisbet, who evaluated how the meeting was run as a whole according to a club’s mission statement, rather than just those who hadn’t been evaluated.  And his verdict?  “Bl__dy great!” J  And as the Incoming President for his own club, he’ll be pinching some of our ideas!

Lynne Cantor, DTM!,  thanked all the Past Presidents and hoped to see them again next year. Special thanks to Cat Kipling for not only being Toastmaster but for organising this event for the 2nd year running!  

AND we finished the meeting to time ..........for the first time in Excalibur’s history surely?!!  And here’s the proof…..!!  

Dates not to be missed!

Our next and final meeting of the current year will be on Wednesday 28^th June, 6:45 for 7pm prompt start at The Fitzrovia Community Centre, 2 Foley Street, W1W 6DL. 

To celebrate the end of our year we will have bubbly and nibbles!  Do wear a hat, to celebrate our Incoming President’s love of headgear!

To make our VPE’s job easier, kindly confirm your attendance on Easyspeak or via excaliburspeakers@gmail.com. Thank you.

Don’t forget to book your ticker for “The Road to Vancouver” on Saturday 15^th July where you will have the chance to hear four European District Champions practice their Semi-Final Speeches before they head to the World Championships in Vancouver. 

www.roadtovancouver.com

Members from other clubs who have completed at least seven speeches are welcome to experience Excalibur at any time and we are always seeking guest GEs.  Contact us at excaliburspeakers@gmail.com.

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