The August rain failed to dampen the spirits of the West Herts Speakers, who met last night at The Noke Hotel in St Albans, for a fun evening of speeches, evaluations and dressing up as Italian police officers – well just one of us did that!

Toastmaster Jen

 

Jen was our brilliant toastmaster of the evening – she has a very natural style that always makes her a pleasure to listen to.  We’re already looking forward to her next prepared speech at our meeting on the 24th August.

Welcome back Spencer!

We happily welcomed back Spencer – a great fun toastmaster who’s been missing for a few meetings recently.  He didn’t disappoint in his role as table topics master, putting Ryan, Judy, Anthony Brennan and Philip under pressure with some impromptu speaking questions around the theme of change’.  Well done Ryan for scooping the ‘Best Table Topics Speaker’ award for his brilliant account of which teacher had changed his life.

Ryan won Best Table Topics Speaker
Werner won Best Speaker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’ve ever used Google Maps, you’ll know it’s a very helpful tool to get you from destination A to destination B.  However, our first prepared speech of the night, given by Werner, gave Google Maps a whole new raison d’etre as he encouraged its use for scoping out and reaching your life goals.  “Just start moving”, he told us, in what was his second ever Toastmasters speech, for which he won the ‘Best Speaker’ of the night award.  Well done Werner.

Next up was Ryan, the aforementioned club member that donned a poliziotto outfit to launch his hilarious speech about a time he’d driven along the Stelvio Pass in northern Italy unknowingly dressed in an outfit that could have landed him in a whole world of trouble.  Sadly, we were so caught by surprise with his outfit, we completely forgot to capture it on camera!

Aga speaking about virtual reality
Andrew delivering his 3rd speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aga and Andrew delivered the 3rd and 4th prepared speeches of the evening.  Aga spoke confidently about virtual reality, what it is, how it’s used and the prospects for using it even more in the future.  Andrew discussed fear and how humans make decisions based on emotions far more that logic.  Both were excellent and informative speeches.

Our evaluators – Richard, Phillip, Paul M, Paul G and Anthony Brennan – had a challenging job in trying to find recommends as well as commends with tonight’s speakers but they did it like the pros they are.  Best evaluator could have easily gone to any of them, but this week Phillip had the edge.  Well done Phil.

At Toastmasters, we always have a ‘word of the day’.  Last night’s was ‘plethora’ selected by the grammarian Jill.  It was certainly used a plethora of times!  Our ah-counter was our newest member – Shayan – who did the role perfectly.  Our outgoing president Anthony Boboe took on the role of timekeeper and kept us all in check with his red, amber and green lights.  While Judy delivered an excellent review of the whole evening as general evaluator, picking up things we did well and areas for improvement.

We hope to see all our fellow toastmasters at our next meeting on 24th August.  Guests are always welcome.