A good measure of laughs, learning and lingo were the order of the day at CIS Toastmasters meeting on Tuesday March 12. After all the formalities were tended to, with Corne van der Nest as the evening’s toastmaster, Marc Rees, the grammarian, explained that the “words of the day” would be French terms/words that have made their way into spoken English. And after that, voila, the speeches kicked off with the table topics, led by Cyril Chessex. Subjects included “Is there such a thing as having too much money?”, “What would your ideal career be”, and “Is there a market in South Africa for another telecommunications provider?”. All the speeches were interesting, fluid and well handled.

For the prepared speeches, it was up to four femmes fatales. Nando Mohaule did her first speech since joining the club, the CC1 or Icebreaker, showing us her joie de vive in both speech and personality. Elise Roscoe followed with her 2nd speech or CC2, a fascinating speech about the language of dogs, and how to deal with them to ensure a happy pet and a good relationship with them.

For her 3rd speech, the CC3, Tanya Kovarsky spoke about cats, and their wisdom, intuition and intelligence. Deleen Levy, the club president, did an advanced speech from the television manual, ACB1, where she played the role of a newsreader and spoke about an Eskom-related issue.

The rest of the meeting showed much esprit with superb evaluations, many more laughs (and hugs) and words of wisdom. The best speaker award went to Elise Roscoe – felicitations! Everyone said au revoir… until the next rendezvous…

Popularity: 70% [?]

Leon Hazan is one the most popular speakers at our toastmasters club. He is a salesman by profession and has developed his own unique brand of humour in his speeches. Post your comments and questions on Leon’s speech below…

Download Leon Hazan’s Speech in mp3 file (1.2MB 5 mins)

Popularity: 89% [?]

Sean Stephenson delivers the first part of his keynote, Time to Stand. Listen to him carefully as he demonstrates excitement through telling a story. Afterwards he eventually gets into the purpose of his talk. Starting a speech with a personal story is one of the most powerful ways to setup the context for the audience.

This is really powerful because its not talking down to people in the audience. At all times Sean is confident, in control and talking directly to the audience. And my point in posting this video clip is to show you if Sean can do it, so can you…!

Any ideas why he keeps moving the wheelchair around?

Popularity: 92% [?]