Jul 03

Toastmasters: Evaluation Workshop

I attended an Evaluation Workshop given by the current UK & Ireland Evaluation Champion Hilary Briggs (Early Bird Speakers) and the 2004 winner and DTM, Bob Ferguson (Excaliburs). By the way, if you check out that link Hilary is on the left of the picture.

In the UK the Toastmasters Evaluation Contest happens at the same time as the International Speech Contest. I don’t believe that this is the case in other countries.

What these two Toastmasters giants don’t know about giving effective evaluations isn’t worth knowing quite frankly. Continue reading

Jun 15

Public Speaking: Playing a Large Audience, part 2

This is a follow-up to my recent post about my M.C.-ing job. Unfortunately, even though I’d heard that the show was pretty much a sell-out, most of the audience didn’t turn up. However, I still opened the show with the energy and professionalism as if there were 750 people.

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Jun 13

Public Speaking: Playing a Large Audience

I’ve got an M.C.-ing job tomorrow night at the Ashcroft Theatre in the Fairfield Halls in Croydon. It’s for a charity called Living Water Satisfies. The Ashcroft is a 750-seater theatre and is the largest that I recall playing. Even in my days as a theatre actor I think the most I’ve performed to was around the 200 mark.

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Jun 11

Two Killer Ways to Increase Your Laughter Power

I was doing my penultimate speech in an Advanced Manual at my Toastmasters club Grosvenor Square Speakers recently. There were only 16 people in the audience, including the time-keeper and General Evaluator. I was all set to go on second, when my name suddenly got read out to speak first.

I went up and did reasonably well, but not as good as I could’ve done. So what was different this time…? Continue reading

Jun 10

Public Speaking: Dress to Impress

Before you speak to an audience consider the clothes that you’re going to wear. Of course there might be a situation where you’re just giving a presentation to your team, so you would wear what you would normally at work. But if you can, and it’s appropriate to do so, try to dress smartly when you present.
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