Handing over chains
Loughborough Speakers’
Club report
First meeting of our new season and, as we were able to meet up physically once more, it was an ideal opportunity for our Past President Peter Minshall to hand over the chain of office to our new President Sue York; who then started proceedings by informing us about our new promotional video that will be posted throughout the club’s Social Media pages to attract new members. She added that training on improving public skills and mentorship for new members will be offered by the club’s more experienced members. To increase confidence of everyone Sue also mentioned the new plan of organising additional impromptu speech meetings between smaller groups via online tools. In addition regular informal gatherings between members will also be offered with an aim to increase bonding and create fun.
The warm-up session got proceedings underway with the title of “Growth” and each member was given 30 seconds to speak on their choice of the subject. Sue then introduced and welcomed two guests to the club – Graham Waller and new student member Fetih Akkaya.
For the next part of the evening there were three prepared speeches given by club members. James Gibson was the first speaker with his title “The Index…”. He explained to us the historical use of the word ‘Index’, describing that in the English language dictionary it is shown as ‘a collection of information stored on a computer or on a set of cards’, and has since evolved to mean the use of notes and how accessible they are now.
Vince Jupp gave some constructive feedback whilst focussing on James’s strong points.
Frank Rawson gave a speech about “The Rewards of Innovation” and he talked about his first career in the Research Department at the British Shoe Machinery
Factory in Leicester. He described how his team saw a problem with ladies fashion for ever increasing the height of high heeled shoes which often then snapped off and how they experimented with many different ideas. He told us how they made 100,000 pairs of shoes before eventually coming up with a solution. He brought some of the tools of the trade with him which were passed around for the members to inspect.
Benjamin Jervis evaluated Frank’s speech and gave him a few recommendations.
Christine Callaway was the third speaker for the night and her speech was about “The Gas Giants”. She took us on a trip of the solar system and spoke about the different planets and their individual uniqueness. Christine clearly knew her subject well and gave us lots of fascinating information.
She was evaluated by James Davies who focussed on her many strong sides whilst giving Christine constructive feedback.
The training session was about “Handling Nerves” which most of the members agreed that they had at some stage been affected by. The trainers for the session, Sue and Vince, arranged members in to smaller groups and gave each of them a topic on how our nerves affect us. Each group was asked to discuss their thoughts and elect a member of the group to give a summary. Finally Sue provided a solution on how we can all use some tools to overcome or control our nerves.
After the coffee interval, the topic session was chaired by Lidia Lupes on a theme of being a “drama queen or drama king”. She gave a topic to participants on how they would react on certain conditions and it created a fun and entertaining atmosphere.
The topic session was then evaluated by Saron T. Bekele.
The meeting drew to a close with Arthur D. Murray’s general evaluation of the whole evening’s proceedings.