h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Did my number 10 speech. In the end, I called it 'Are you paying attention?' and it was about being in the moment. I gave out raisins and had my audience eat theirs slowly and contrast that with how they felt whilst I was giving them out, when I stood in silence for quite a long time. It was a bit scary, but I got a good evaluation. I know, however, that I could have done much better. I didn't get as much time to prepare and rehearse as I would have liked.

Mind you, I don't think I'll ever do a speech that I will be 100% with and I suppose that's no bad thing. Otherwise, there would be nothing to aim for.

Traveller in Time in the
" It is the trying that counts not the perfection. "

Thanks TiT

I've now achieved CTM status (Competent Toastmaster).

Traveller in Time just read the other Journal
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ZSF, you are a credit to yourself. It seems like only yesterday when you started the programme. How does it feel? Do you think you learned anything from the process? Will you go on to get your advanced qualifications now? There are some very interesting manuals to do.

Progress in our club has been very modest. We are hoping to be able to sign up a small number of new members and to achieve our goals for the year. I am in the UK today for our meeting, so I will miss out on meeting a few new people who contacted me. Fingers crossed on a good night.

Thanks, Woodpigeon.

How does it feel? Well my first thoughts were about things I could have improved on with more preparation and a couple of things in hindsight. I think most of all I feel relieved. I tend to put myself under pressure to get things done and I felt that very much last night. As usual, I got talked out of preparing properly over the weekend, so it came down to doing it the night before. OK, I had blocked the majority of it out, but had done absolutely no rehearsal.

What did I learn in the process? Well, that I seem to thrive on 'seat of the pants' type preparation. That I can have quite long pauses in my presentations and that they add to them. That I'm comfortable in front of an audience - even better when I can get them to interact with me.

Good luck for progress with your club. Ours is bubbling along nicely. We had a couple of icebreakers before my number 10 and both went very well for the individuals. One of them is a barrister, I'm told.

What are your goals for the year? I remember you saying they'll concern things like new members, sponsoring clubs and other stuff.

I've now done my first advanced speech - from the storytelling manual. I did one of the Baba Yaga stories (I did an entry on her a while ago, which was Editor's Choice) and it went down really well. It's one I've done lots of times before, but to mostly children. It's a completely different kettle of fish doing it to adults. The children reacted better. Perhaps I felt I did better in front of children than adults because there are no time pressures. All the same, one of the evaluation slips said 'awesome', which I thought was rather nice of them.

Not sure what to do next, either a second storytelling one or the first from the persuasive speakers' manual.

Brilliant - well done. Aren't the Baba Yaga stories not a bit scary for children? I've just started reading the Hobbit to my eldest, so I will get some practice in over the following few weeks.

Things are not so good with my club. We had our speech competition yesterday and to be honest, it was a bit of a mess. The EVP left it until very late to get the agenda together, and the contest chair wasn't properly prepared. We had a lot of improvising to do, and it showed. We are hosting the Area Competition in a few weeks and we have a load of things to do. On top of that we have membership issue. Ay yay - it couldn't have happened at a worse time for me, as I have work issues, domestic issues and educational issues to deal with on top of all this. It's blunted my enjoyment of it all, I'm afraid.

I've told my Baba Yaga stories (three of them) for about 4 years now. The one I told has Baba Yaga eating her own daughter (instead of the hero), but because she was outwitted and got her just deserts, they've all been OK with it.

Oh, I do sympathise about your club. Our current EVP tends to leave things to the last minute, but I think it is more that it's difficult to get people to commit to things a long time ahead of time. It generally comes together well. The previous meeting, I was meant to be Toastmaster and had to pull out at the last minute as little was sick. I managed to get a last-minute replacement, though, in Roy, who was down as an evaluator. In the end he did both roles.

You sound to have a lot on your plate at the moment. I recognise all those issues as being current for me too. As it's the end of our financial year, things tend to get manic at this time of year. Is it the same for you? Does your wife participate in Toastmasters?

Although my club is doing nicely for new members at the moment (probably because it's new and in its growth phase), I know that I haven't done as much as I could to get new members. I know that my training dept thinks it would be good for our staff, but I haven't really pushed that at the moment. I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the stuff I have on my plate. But maybe employers might encourage their staff to participate if you did a mailshot to them? You could do this as a team? Or have you already exhausted that avenue?

No, my wife is not in Toastmasters, and to be honest, she thinks I was mad to take on the president job this year. She's right, too. It's been a problem for both of us throughout the year - to really commit yourself to this role you would need to spend more time than is available to me.

Things are very hectic at the moment, not least because we have a speech competition coming up. The club competition was a disaster, and I have a lot of work on my plate to ensure that this one will meet something of a reasonable standard.

We have tried employers before, but there has been very little take-up.

The time factor's a bit of a sod, isn't it? What a pity your wife isn't interested. Quite possibly between you it would be much easier for you to do your duties. Has she been to a meeting, or are there childcare issues? Mind, if it has caused problems between you, I can see it would be less easy to sell. I also have some difficulties with the work of Treasurer (which I now find includes having to chase people to renew their membership) and other commitments which I'm trying to do.

I'm really sorry to hear that your speech competition was a disaster. There's a meeting tomorrow here (we're not participating) and I don't think I'll be able to attend, although I've been a judge at another competition, so I know what happens at one. The idea was that members of our club attend so that we can see what it entails to see what we want to do for next year.

As far as the employers are concerned, I suspect that it would take more than one contact to interest them. I'm told that most salespeople make two contacts and the sale is generally on the third call, so more persistent ones have better results. I know that I'm not a natural salesperson.

I've almost finished my second manual. I've done nos 1-3 and 5 of the manual - just no 4 to complete. I did no 5 third, because of the time - 8-10 minutes, which is a decent time to tell a story. This last was only 4-6 minutes, which is a bit short. Both were from the Lakota Indian tradition - great but very different stories - and both completed at the last minute. The no 5 was done last week and I wasn't expecting to give a speech at all, however two of three speakers pulled out at the last minute and I offered mine one the day. Funnily enough, it is one of the best speeches I've given and was delivered exactly to time (well, within 1 second), which for me is a bit of a record. Todays was delivered with 5 seconds to spare - again, pretty good going for a speech which hadn't really had any rehearsal. I'm beginning to get a much better feel for the length of speeches.

Our club is about to hold a contest (or enter a contest, I'm not sure which) - in two subjects - table topics and humorous speeches. I could conceivably enter the first, but I haven't yet delivered a humorous speech. I expect it would be a good challenge for me.

Well done! I'm thinking of entering the humourous speech contest also - although I'm a bit worried about being able to come up with a topic and a speech that people would find funny. I tend to be a bit too serious normally: humourous speeches don't come easily to me. I'm Toastmaster for our first meeting next week, and if possible I would like to get through a good few speeches this year. It all depends on work and home things of course.

Good luck, Woodpigeon. I'm like you - usually quite serious and I'm quite afraid of trying to be funny and failing. Do let me know how you get on. I know that the only way to overcome this fear is to give myself the challenge of doing it. I've decided to do a personal story for my final one - the story of my marriage breakup and the song that proved to be the turning point. http://www.a-cappella.com/catalog/file/10216/66689-05_30.mp3

I don't know if I said this, but I was asked to do a story-telling session at the camp I went to and it was very successful. I told two of the stories later at Toastmasters - much more difficult because of the time constraint. One thing though, with practice, I'm finding it much easier to remember the content of my speeches.

Our club is still going strong. At the last meeting, someone came up to me and asked me if I would be his mentor - a lovely Nigerian man (there's a big Nigerian contingent in our club) and he said that I was a role model for him! I was a bit flabbergasted.

We have a speech contest coming up and I've put myself down as a speech evaluator. It's something I do reasonably well I don't have the bandwidth at the moment to prepare speeches which all the other stuff that's going on. Should be fun. No idea who else is up for it and how I'll do in my club. I should be in with a shout, I think.

Our club has been doing well this year too. A lot of new members and I personally have been doing many different evaluations - I think I'll put my name down for the evaluation contest in the upcoming speech competition. I'm Toastmaster next week which means that I will have to get moving on the programme!