We were all renamed ‘ghostmasters’ for our Halloween themed club meeting last week, led by Toastmaster for the Evening, Aparna.

The best costume award went to NO ONE, as not one of us decided to come as witches or ghouls, however we had plenty of other awards to give out to recognise those that excelled in their speaking roles.

Spencer took home the Best Speaker award of the evening, for a personal tale of overcoming anxiety and not simply ‘forgetting everything and running’.  He had stiff competition from Werner who shared his experiences of when he forced himself to live off just £2 a day, for a month, to get a better idea of what it must be like to live, as many do, on a very low income; from Saulius whose third speech from the Competent Communicator manual was all about his superhero Martin Strel, the Slovenian marathon swimmer; and from Diana who absolutely killed her icebreaker speech.  We cannot wait to hear more from Diana.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our best evaluator award winner was a three-way tie between Zsuzsanna, Jack and Paul Goodman.  Each had their own unique style and delivered some excellent feedback for our speakers.

The table topics section of the evening was hosted by Jill on the subject of scary movies.  She had some very tricky questions that challenged even our most accomplished speakers.  It was Judy’s recollection of when she discovered that Santa wasn’t real that won her the Best Table Topics Speaker award.  Well done to everyone who stood up and spoke for the obligatory 1 minute – Shayan, Matt, Ajeet and Andrew – you all did very well.

Club business included an update from Andrew on how fulfilling it was to attend the Division conference recently, in support of club member Ryan who represented our area in the Table Topics Contest. We have also started to plan our West Herts Speakers Club Christmas party!