September is another interesting month at Bay Street Breakfast Club. This month we'll be holding two contests; the Humorous Speech Contest on September 9th and the Table Topics Contest on September 23rd.

Humorous speeches are a great way to start any Wednesday morning, so be sure to attend on September 9th. This contest is one of the most fun meetings of the year, and is sure to provide some great laughs.

Our annual table topics contest is another great start to a Wednesday morning. Be sure to sign up as a speaker and challenge yourself to quick thinking on your feet.

Even if you won’t be participating as a speaker, you’ll surely enjoy some great laughs and impromptu speaking by your fellow BSBC members.

Written Sep 2nd, 2011

I spent some time on the net trying to find a beneficial article to upload. While searching, I found a meaningful article at home on the Toastmaster's International website. It finds purpose with an aspect many speeches can benefit from...Gestures. I've copied and pasted the article below and included the link at the bottom. Enjoy

Article:

Gestures: Get Moving!  

Let go of your stiff death grip on the lectern and learn how to make your speeches interesting through body language.     

The human body contains more than 700 muscles, but few of those are used by speakers – except when using their arms and fingers in a life-preserving clutch of lecterns and laser pointers or frenetically clicking on PowerPoint slides. Speakers tend to focus most of their efforts in search of the perfect word to illustrate their precious points, despite overwhelming evidence proving that, in fact, our bodies speak louder than words.

Your effectiveness as a speaker is directly related to your ability to invoke emotion and interest through the use of non-verbal communication. Your listeners judge you and your message based on what they see as well as what they hear. In public speaking, your body can be an effective tool for adding emphasis and clarity to your words. It’s also your most powerful instrument for convincing an audience of your sincerity, earnestness and enthusiasm. Whether your purpose is to inform, persuade, entertain, motivate or inspire, your body language and the personality you project must be appropriate to what you say. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” So be sure your appearance, posture and attire is appropriate as well.

Here’s how you can incorporate appropriate body language into your speeches:

• Start with eye contact. Being prepared – having control of your message – is a prerequisite for being able to project and establish a bond with the audience. Don’t just pass your gaze throughout the room; try to focus on individual listeners and create a bond with them by looking them directly in the eyes for five to 10 seconds.
• Smile!
• Express emotion with your facial muscles. For inspiration, take a look at the The Human Face, a BBC documentary narrated by John Cleese of Monty Python fame, now available on DVD.
• Avoid distracting mannerisms – have a friend watch as you practice and look for nervous expressions such as fidgeting, twitching, lip biting, key jingling, hands in pockets or behind the back.
• Telling a story? Highlight the action verbs and look for ways to act out one or more parts. Speaking about marathon running? Run a few steps.
• Stay true to your personality. Don’t copy gestures from a book or other speaker, but respond naturally to what you feel and say.
• Make gestures convincing. Every hand gesture should be total body movement that starts from the shoulder – never from the elbow. Half-hearted gestures look artificial.
• Vary your speaking position by moving from one spot on the stage to another. For example, walk to the other side of the stage as you move to a new topic or move toward the audience as you ask a question.

•  Click here for the original link 

Last week, on the  23rd of September, our club had a celebratory meeting to commemorate our 1000th meeting. Rob Peck, one of our founding members, offered us the privilege of hearing one of his inspiring speeches and was kind enough to allow us to share it online.   Enjoy! 

“Ah Ha!” Moments

(Presentation by Rob Peck to the 1001st Meeting of the Bay Street Breakfast Club Celebrating 1000 meetings of BSBC)

“Ah Ha!” Moments. We have all had them. Those joyous moments, unique and special to each of us, when the relationship between two or more distinct points suddenly became clear in our min

This evening, I would like to share with you three “Ah ha!” moments in my life. Funnily enough, these all relate to Toastmasters!

“Ah ha!” Moment #1

Since the best speeches are ice-breakers, we should strive to make every speech an ice-breaker. First you need to know what an ice-breaker speech is. For the non-Toastmasters in the crowd, the ice-breaker is the first formal prepared speech performed by a new Toastmaster. To make the new Toastmaster as comfortable as possible in this nerve-wracking experience, the ice-breaker’s subject is the person him or herself. The thought is, if you really know your subject you will be more relaxed and the subject we all know best is ourselves, so we should tell stories about ourselves. It works. Ice-breakers are often fascinating speeches.

Subsequent speeches in the Toastmaster’s basic manual emphasize different skill sets in speaking – organization, gestures, vocal variety and the like. Often in doing these speeches, Toastmasters choose subjects of which they know little; they research a topic and give a speech laden with facts. The end result is a wooden, unenthusiastic presentation. Over the years I have noticed that often Toastmasters get to their 7th or 8th manual speech before they again give a speech as good as their ice-breaker. Why? Because they finally get back to choosing topics they care about and that they have personal experience with. Specifically, they get back to:

1. Loving their subject: - only speaking about topics they really care about
2. Being themselves: - you can only be a second best somebody else
3. Telling personal stories: - making a point and telling a story.

If people remember the story, they remember the point. Then it hit me.

My first big “Ah ha!” moment in Toastmasters: Since the best speeches are ice-breakers, we should strive to make every speech an ice-breaker.

“Ah ha!” Moment #2

Toastmasters is a means to reflect on life’s events and draw meaning and lessons from them. After my “Ah ha!” moment #1, I started to make every speech I did an ice-breaker. That is, every time I wrote a speech, I looked for how I could illustrate it with personal stories from my own lif

I have been speaking in public for a long time now. And for most of that time, my speeches have had a strong personal component. Typically, I pick an issue that is dominating my attention. Something that is really bugging me. Like the time I bought an aluminum shingle roof. I paid 3 times the price of an asphalt roof.

Why? Well because I believed the salesman’s claim that this was the next thing in wonder roofs! And because I believed, to paraphrase Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, that “costly thy roof as thy purse can buy ... rich not gaudy.” The Problem? The roof didn’t work. Two years after it was installed, it started to leak. I didn’t want to admit defeat. For 5 years I tried negotiating with the contractor who sold me the roof. When that didn’t work, I had another contractor replace the offending parts of the roof. It leaked worse than ever. I spent the next 5 years trying to get the second contractor to fix his job. That didn’t work either!

Finally, I admitted defeat. We ripped the whole thing off, including 75% of the plywood underneath, and put on an asphalt roof. That episode in all of its horror is saved in my files. In making a speech out of it, I revisited everything that had happened. I organized it in my mind. When did I do what I did and why? What happened next? Who did what to whom and how? Lessons learned?

1. Know your contractor
2. Never be on the bleeding edge of technology
3. Cut your losses. Don’t throw good money after bad.

I save all my speeches. Originally they were all in hard copy. Now I have them stored on my computer. Years of speeches reflecting on life’s challenges big and small have left me a type of diary that chronicles events but also draws wisdom from them to guide me in my future actions.

And that led me to my “Ah ha!” Moment #2: Toastmasters is a means to reflect on life’s events and draw meaning and lessons from them.

Which brings us to my “Ah ha!” Moment #3.

“Ah ha!” Moment #3

Toastmasters can help you to form deep and valuable friendships, friendships that you can fall back on when life throws you its’ inevitable curves. For years now, whenever I speak, I have used the occasion to reflect on the challenges that life has thrown in my way. I have shared my my hopes and my fears, my successes, my failures my strengths, my weaknesses. my knowledge and my ignorance.

At the Toastmasters Clubs that I have spoken at, and most notably at Bay Street Breakfast where I have attended most of its 1001 meetings, others have done the same thing. So what happens when you meet weekly for an hour plus with a group of people with whom you regularly share confidences? Well you do improve as a speaker!

But more importantly, and this is my Ah Ha! Moment #3: Toastmasters can help you to form deep and valuable friendships, friendships that you can fall back on when life throws you its’ inevitable curves.

I think women have always known that! But I am a man and I am a slow learner!

Conclusion

So let me recap my three biggest “Ah ha!” moments in Toastmasters:

• Since the best speeches are ice-breakers, we should strive to make every speech an ice-breaker.
• Toastmasters is a means to reflect on life’s events and to draw meaning and lessons from them.
• Toastmasters can help you to form deep and valuable friendships, friendships that you can fall back on when life throws you its’ inevitable curves.

All of which has led me to a 4th “Ah ha!” moment. Because I know that Bay Street Breakfast, my Toastmasters Club, has become a sanctuary for me ... a harbour into which I can sail my sometimes leaky ship when it has been battered by the Hurricane Igors of life. Not the only sanctuary (I do have other family and friends!) but an important one.

Here’s to the next 1,000 meetings!

Madam Toastmaster!