Improve Your Table Topics with Stories

One of the problems that many of us face when it comes to table topics is being able to answer a question on the spot with no preparation. We sit there in Toastmasters and marvel at the people who can conjure up a story instantly to satisfy a topic, yet when we stand up and try this, nothing happens, we stammer and stumble our way to that elusive green card.

Why are some people better than others? We could call it talent, we could call it natural ability, we could say that it’s because they’re just better than us but really it comes down to one thing – practice. The more your practice something, the better you get.

Of course we don’t want to practice in public and look stupid so instead we can cheat, we can practice in private, so that the next time we’ll be ready.

A brilliant way to do this is by using Story Cubes:

Story Cubes can be used to help hone your story-telling skills and make you a master of the table topics response because with Story Cubes, you get the chance to set your imagination free and practice as much as you need.

How it works is that you take the nine story cubes and roll them. Using the nine pictures on the top of the cubes, tell a story. When the story is complete, roll again and tell a new story. Every story will be different, your imagination will be exercised and stretched, and your story-telling ability will improve.

The more you practice, the easier it will become, the more you practice the better a table topic speaker you’ll be.

The Humorous Speech Contest – Being Funny

Do you want to improve your humorous speech?

Have a read of some of our articles:

Peter’s “The Humorous Speech Analyzed Series”

• Part 1 – Andy Dooly
• Part 2 – John Zimmer
• Part 3 – Lester Staats

Dermot’s “How to Win a Humorous Speech Contest Series”

• Part 1 – Suit Up
• Part 2 – Know Your Audience

Totally Table Topics

It’s contest time again!

Make your table topic answer stand out from all the others by following our simple tips:

1. Cheat
2. What not to do
3. Tackling the terror
4. Answering the question
5. Truth or Lies?

Speed

The main strength of Toastmasters is the opportunity for creativity where inside those safe closed walls of the Toastmasters’ comfort zone, you can do anything, be anything. You can push the boundaries of not just yourself but also of fellow toastmasters and I love this.

For me, one of the boundaries that I enjoy bending and reshaping is the format of our meetings. The basic toastmasters format is so flexible that the potential is amazing, as long as you keep the core focus on speaking and evaluating then you can do anything.

One idea that I’m aching to try out is the concept of SpeedGeeking.

Inspired by speed-dating, SpeedGeeking was designed as a short, simple and interactive way of passing new information about new projects, software tools and future technical trends.

It works by setting up presenters around a room. Each presenter will give 5 minute presentations to small groups, usually 3 or 4 minutes of presentation with 1 or 2 minutes answering questions. When the 5 minutes are up, a whistle is blown and like speed-dating, each group gets up and moves on to the next presentation. This gives the groups the chance to hear multiple new ideas and presentations in a short space of time and the presenters many opportunities to show off their abilities and presentation skills.

We can take this concept and adapt it to a toastmasters meeting because what is happening here is that presenters have the chance to speak multiple times to different audiences.

What if each time they spoke the presentation was that little bit better?

What if by the end of the session their final presentation was dramatically improved?

This is the potential of speed-toasting.

Instead of having the usual serial presentations, change the format to parallel presentations with a presentation zone in each corner or the room. Split the audience between the four zones. In this version, the audiences will stay in place and the speakers will move, this will also allow for more than 4 speakers to present in one session.

This being Toastmasters, we can’t have the speakers speak without an evaluation, now can we?

My proposal is that instead of having 5 minute presentations, create sessions of 10 minute blocks.

Each block will consist of a 5-7 minute speech followed by 3-4 minutes of either a single evaluation or a group evaluation.

Each speaker will be evaluated four times, once by each audience group. The idea is that they can use what they learnt from each evaluation in the next presentation of the speech thus by the end of the 4th presentation, the speech has gotten stronger, more cohesive and more effective.

In one evening a speaker can make more progress than they would in 3 or 4 meetings….

Tempting isn’t it?

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For more information on SpeedGeeking: http://facilitation.aspirationtech.org/index.php/Facilitation:SpeedGeeking

CC 10 Speech Video

I promised to upload the videos from last Friday, so here they are!

The first, is my 10th CC speech, ‘Graveyard of Dreams’. The 10th CC project is to “Motivate your audience”. Its meant to tie in all the concepts learned in the CC manual, up till the 10th speech.

The second video is me getting my CC badge from Dermot, president of Utrecht Toastmasters club.

CC finally…

Yesterday was a special evening for me…..more so because I finally came to the end of the first stage of a journey that I started February last year. Yesterday, I finally delivered my 10 th speech from the Competent Communication manual, and the project is about “Inspiring your Audience”.

Now, this project was something that I wanted to do to the best of my ability. It was a project that was supposed to tie in (As much as possible), all the skills the previous projects in the CC manual were supposed to teach a toastmaster. Skills like Vocal Variety, using active voice instead of passive in your speech, and lots of others. To be quite honest, I was nervous, though people, for reasons best known to them, refuse to believe me.

Funny thing was I was quite prepared to do the speech over again, if my evaluator didn’t find it good enough.

Due to some personal issues in my life, I sort of didn’t have so much time for toastmasters. I remember talking to Derm, and he asking me (In January at the officers training) to start writing the speech. I had this habit of writing speeches one week to the presentation day, and using my natural abilities to get it done…but this time I wanted it to be different…

So I went home, and began writing. I had no idea what to write about, or even where to start from.  But I do remember that the concept had flashed into my head, when I was on the tram home, after my normal work commute, and it was simply a matter of sculpting the speech and making it beautiful. Now, half way during the speech, I got distracted, or maybe it was writers block…and I stopped, and didn’t pick it up for weeks…

I wonder why that seemed to happen, but then one day, my subconscious or my intuition, began nudging me to finish it. Now, I suspect that deep inside me lies this desire for everything to be perfect. For all variables to just come into sync all at once…but I have learned that it doesn’t all have to come together at once, before you make your move. So I just wrote stuff down to finish the speech.

Now came the hard part..Internalizing the speech. I have a 4 hour minimum commute daily on the train, so I began  reading my speech, adding stuff, and rehearsing the delivery style in my mind. I began to think back to all the feedback I had received from evaluators.   I knew my weak points were:

• Pauses. I have this tendency of speaking too fast. Yes, I am a native English speaker, but I discovered I had to modulate my voice, because of my accent.
• Smiling too often. Theres a time for everything, and the kind of speech dictates the sort of emotions you want to project. So, I wasn’t going to smile in this speech, because this was serious business. I also was going to project this air of dominance…taking the stage.
• Gestures and body language…I needed to improve that some more.

I also discovered, that I had a subconscious lid on my emotions, because of my culture and where I am from, and I always had this lid…but toastmasters is meant to be like a workshop, where you get to experiment in a supportive environment, and after watching other talented speakers (Corinne is the master of pauses I think ) I decided to take the lid off…

Was I nervous yesterday? Absolutely. I didn’t have the space to rehearse my speech out loud, so I had to say it out loud, on my daily walk, during my lunch break. I must have rehearsed the speech so many times, and I even asked the toastmaster to give me the last slot, because I wasn’t sure if my commute would allow me to get there on time..

But I did get there on time, and was able to do the Sergeant-at arming. Till the time came for the actual speech. I delivered, and people seemed to like it!

Whew, it was over! But wait, our president, Dermot, beckoned me over, and handed over my CC badge on the spot! That was a truly great moment for me, as  It sort of marked my passage into the advanced speaking stage of Toastmasters. I had to give a short speech, so I did…luckily, I didn’t thank my Dog or my Cat in the speech

My evaluator came on, later, and told me I had improved, and taken care of almost all the points, I asked him to watch out for. He mentioned I’d made a huge leap since last time, and he had actually predicted what I would do last night, based on my previous speeches, but I had proven him wrong . Its so lovely when you break out of the box isn’t it? Although, there was one person who seemed to have issues with my accent..I think I might need to get feedback about it, to see if its just one persons opinion

But more to come…after all the evaluations, and table topics (And I think yesterdays TT master has lots of talent and potential) the awards were announced, and I won best speech! Now that was amazing for me (Yeah right) because Utrecht Toastmasters has talented speakers, and to win best speech, means a lot.

So it was club business, and me dashing home to Delft, basking in the euphoria of my win, and becoming the latest CC in Utrecht Toastmasters.

The experience was wonderful, and all..I remember a fellow member asking me if I remembered my first speech, how I was so fast, and all, but I had improved. And back then, I got best speech again…but I was really awful then compared to now…

Theres still a journey ahead of me, more advanced stuff to do, and more opportunities to give back to the club, which made impact in my life.

If theres something I have learned on this journey, its this…do not rush, take your time…its a journey, not a race. As long as you keep getting better with every speech, then thats all that matters.

And to think that for me, it all started with a simple decision, February last year…2009.

I will upload the videos later….seems the WP video uploader has issues!

Stand Up On Your Soapbox

Question: What is the strongest element of Toastmasters?

Answer: Evaluation.

Evaluation is one of the main reasons why people join Toastmasters and it works so well that some members want more than just one evaluation and in Toastmasters there a number of opportunities for extra evaluations:

1. Mentoring. Every member has a more experienced Toastmaster assigned to be their mentor and they can not only evaluate your speech but since they’ve seen all your speeches, they can evaluate your progress and improvements, it’s an invaluable way of seeing how much you’ve improved and also to find out the little things that you repeat subconciously.
2. Mini-evaluation slips. Each speaker doesn’t just have one evaluator, the whole audience is their evaluator, writing feedback during the meeting and giving it to the speaker afterwards.
3. Group evaluation. Everyone gets to give a short evaluation of your speech, it gives you many opinions and many ideas for improvement and helps everyone learn.
4. Target Speaker. For Evaluation contests, the contestants need a speaker to evaluate. Being a target speaker means that you get between 3 and 10 full evaluations, a lot of information all at once but most target speakers find this a great way to learn and improve.

Now, added to this barrage of feedback, there is a new option – get the world to evaluate you!

Introducing Soapbox Guru.

Soapbox Guru (http://www.soapboxguru.com/) gives you the chance to upload a video of your speech for evaluation by speakers from all over the world. Set up by two Toastmasters from Canada, it has a familiar format, a section for what was good about the speech and a section for what needs improvement.

It’s still relatively new but it has the potential to bring your speaking to a whole new audience and may even bring you to a new level of public speaking…

20-20 Vision

Are you ready for a new challenge?

The Pecha-Kucha style of presentation will add that extra bit of excitement to your public-speaking life while at the same time adding style  and sophistication to your presentations…

What more could you want?

It’s a very simple concept and it suits Toastmasters speeches perfectly. The idea is that you use a presentation tool like Powerpoint and instead of giving pages and pages of boring text you show 20 images. Each image is shown for 20 seconds and then it moves onto the next image.

20 slides, 20 seconds each, your whole presentation will finish at 6 minutes 40 seconds.

Using this style effectively will mean that your audience will find it easier to grasp difficult concepts, and they are more likely to  remember your message.

But don’t let the simplicity of the presentation style fool you, this is a challenging exercise:

What 20 images will you choose to get your message and ideas across effectively?

Can you write a speech which will have one concept/idea/explanation per slide, i.e. one per 20 seconds?

This is a Goldilocks exercise, what you say during each slide should be  not too long, not too short, it has to be just right.

To see this in action then go see your local Pecha Kucha night (see http://www.pecha-kucha.org/) or give it a try with your next speech!

Table Topics Ideas #4: Touch, Taste, Hear and Smell

We recently had a meeting with the theme of  “Awaking the Senses – Touch, Taste, Sound and Smell” which explored the four non-visual senses. The meeting had moments of pure darkness and ghost stories told by candlelight so the table topics needed to be equally special.

The Table-Topic Master blindfolded the table topic speaker and gave them an object. The audience could see the object but the speaker had to use their senses to learn about the object. They were given 20-30 seconds to discover what they could about the object before they were made to speak.

They could could hand back the object and take off the blindfold or they could stay blindfolded and keep the object. They could talk about what they thought the object was or they could talk about what feelings, sensations or memories the object brought to mind. It provided some very interesting and entertaining speeches.

By giving speaker the object they automatically have something solid to talk about, thus allowing the speakers to be more comfortable and imaginative while giving their table topic speech.

How to Win a Humorous Speech Contest, Part 2 – Know Your Audience

For some people when they write a speech, it’s all about them – it’s their ideas, it’s their creativity, it’s their words!

But they’re wrong!

It is their ideas, it is their creativity, it is their words but it’s not about them.

It’s about the audience, you are writing for them, you are speaking to them, if you forget about the audience then don’t bother getting up onto the stage.

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Looking at the  judging criteria for the Humorous Speech contest and you will see four categories relating directly to the audience and these four categories account for 55% of the judges marks. If you’re not speaking to the audience, you not going to win!

Those very important categories are:

SPEECH DEVELOPMENT is the way the speaker puts ideas together so the audience can understand them. The speech is structured around a purpose or theme, and the structure must include an opening, body and conclusion. A good humorous speech immediately engages the audience’s attention and then builds to a significant conclusion; it is not a series of jokes or a monologue.

SPEECH VALUE justifies the act of speaking. The speaker has a responsibility to say something meaningful and original to the audience, even in a humorous speech. The ideas should be important, even though they are presented humorously.

AUDIENCE RESPONSE reflects the audience’s reaction to the speech. Did the speech hold the audience’s interest? Did people understand and laugh at the humor?

MANNER is the indirect revelation of the speaker’s real self as the speech is delivered. The speaker should speak with enthusiasm and assurance, showing interest in the audience and confidence in their reactions.

Look at the phrases and questions used:

• The speaker puts ideas together so the audience can understand them.
• A good humorous speech immediately engages the audience’s attention
• The speaker has a responsibility to say something meaningful and original to the audience.
• The audience’s reaction to the speech.
• Did the speech hold the audience’s interest?
• Did people understand and laugh at the humor?
• Showing interest in the audience and confidence in their reactions.

Ask yourself – when you write a speech (any speech, not just a contest speech), does your speech fulfill the above seven audience requirements?

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Think of who your audience is. What interests them? How can you relate your speech to their needs? Why should your audience listen to you instead of sending texts on their mobile phone?

Look at your speech – are you telling racist jokes? Sexist jokes? Is your language too technical? Will your words alienate or upset a portion of the audience?

To be an effective speaker you must be able to communicate with the whole audience not just a portion of the audience.

John Zimmer, winner of the District 59 Humorous Speech Contest 2008 and 2009, understands the importance of thinking of your audience as you write your speech. His audience were toastmasters, his speeches took toastmasters concepts and twisted them in humorous ways, he spoke about ideas that interested the audience, he spoke to them.

And he’s not the only one, in our area contest, the top three speakers had speeches about public speaking – know your audience, cater your speech for them.

That doesn’t mean that you should always talk about toastmasters or public speaking, talk about universal problems that affect everyone – love, family, babies, tax, travel, wishes, dreams – relate to your audience and they will relate to you.