Machines that Think?

We had a very lively meeting on Wednesday, 4th September, with over 20 people joining in the fun. There were two Pathways Icebreaker speeches. Christine kicked off the evening with her first speech on Machines that Think? and treated us to an interesting experiment involving the sense of smell. Judith gave her first speech, entitled What do you See? and won best speech of the evening.

Charlie brought music to our ears with his second speech entitled Beats, Rhymes and Life, for the Presentation Mastery Pathway. Oliver gave us ‘food for thought’ with his speech about The Delight of a Chewy Meal. And Dan was presented with the best Evaluator award for the evening.

We then had five excellent table topics from Andrea with speeches from Maria, Sophia, Sam, Sharan and Enroy. Well done to the guests and new members. Maria won best Table Topics speech and is pictured below with Sharan who presented her with the certificate, and Bradley, our President.

Sharan, Maria and Bradley

Dorothy received her Competent Leadership award and badge and was thanked by the club President for all her hard work as Vice President for Public Relations over the last two years and for setting up and organising club events. She is going to be a tough act to follow!

Dorothy receiving her Competent Leadership Award

Come and join us for our next event on Saturday 14th September in Hitchin Market Square between 9am and 2pm. We will be running another Speakers in the Square where you can visit our stall and have a go in public with the mic.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday, 18th September, 7.30pm at the Sun Hotel and will be a contest night. Be great to see you there!


Quest for Knowledge

Our meeting on 7th August was well attended with over 20 people enjoying speeches and tabletopics. Oliver, one of our newest members, pictured below, won best speech of the evening for his first Icebreaker speech called Quest for Knowledge. Well done!

Oliver wins best speech for his Icebreaker called Quest for Knowledge. Also pictured are Peter on the left and Bradley on the right.
Well done Oliver – great first speech!

Our President, Bradley, gave an interesting speech called “Can you run at 200 mph?” Rose told a story about “Little Johnny” and Andrea introduced some excellent Table Topics. These are where members of the audience get the chance to give an impromptu talk for one to two minutes on a selected topic.

Dan, another new member, won best evaluator for the evening with his first ever evaluation. And our guest, Peter, won the best table topics speech on his first night.

Another first for the evening was for Karl who presided as Toastmaster of the evening and did a great job keeping us all in order.

Photo shows Dan Winterbourne receiving his aware for best evaluator, together with Bradley Peters, our President and Peter, our star guest of the night.
Dan, Bradley and Peter – Great work guys!

Come and join us next week upstairs at The Sun Hotel in Hitchin. The meeting starts at 7.30pm and runs till around 9.45 or 10pm, depending on the number of speakers. It’s great fun and you can try it out for free.


Speakers in the Square

Rose Saliba

Saturday 25th of May was our first adventure into Hitchin Town Square. Our purpose was to let people in the local community know about our club and how it could help them to achieve their personal goals.

I have to say that it was a great success. The weather was great, the town was packed and we had a strong and committed group of Toastmasters who made the day. We even had a Toastmaster from Harrow and a Toastmaster from Stevenage Speakers club.

Salman, Karl & John meet spiderman!

Before the event, we had very little in the way of publicity material. We didn’t have any flyers or a banner to put up on the gazebo. Our club worked together to get the copy and designs done for the flyers and the banner which we used along the back of the gazebo. There was some work to do and compromises to made to suit all the members of the committee but we got it all done in just under two weeks! A special thanks to Salman, Lynne, Andrea and John.

Dorothy

Of course there are some things that we would have done differently. If we were to do this again we would have started working on the publicity a lot earlier and we would have had separate meetings dedicated to the design of the publicity material. This would have been much easier but the reality is that we all have day jobs and family so finding the time can be tricky.

Mandy (Stevenage Speakers)

For myself, I would aim to be more positive. I was worried that we wouldn’t have flyers, that I would forget something or that I would be alone at the stall! My anxiety about the event going wrong was not motivating, yet our club rallied round the idea and it was a great day. I really enjoyed the enthusiasm of everyone and in reality there was only one small problem which was sorted out by 10am!

David Phelops (Harrow)

David even sang “O solo Mio!” which certainly stopped passers by in their tracks.

The microphone and PA made a big difference. So much more interesting than a table full of flyers. Of course you would expect a speakers club to do some Public Speaking wouldn’t you?

Karl Hope

Funnily, we were all a bit reticent to use the mic at first!

We also managed to get members of the public to get up and speak which was great. Some people also asked us if we could help them to train students or to help out with providing some speakers.

It takes courage to speak.

Well done everyone! Let’s do this again!

Next time don’t forget the sun lotion!