Open Mic in the Square

A huge thank you to all the volunteers who generously gave up their time on Saturday, 14th September, to greet visitors at our stall in Hitchin Town Centre. This was our second time running a Speakers event in the square and I am pleased to say that it was as successful as the first one.

Our President, Bradley Peters opening the event and Salman Lone manning the stall

The event was opened by our President, Bradley Peters, pictured, while Salman Lone continued to set up the stall with the flyers that he had kindly designed for us previously.

Salman giving technical assistance with the mic for Olli

Oliver Schlenker (Olli) took a turn at the mic informing the people in the square of all the many advantages that joining North Herts Speakers can bring. These include becoming a better speaker, developing skills and confidence to express yourself effectively and opportunities to build leadership skills – all in a supportive and friendly environment.

There were several debuts and demonstrations of bravery in overcoming resistance to using the mic. After Sophie Brown successfully gave it go, she encouraged and assisted Christine Evans-Pughe to do likewise. And Maria Iredale gave her first speech using the mic in the square. Well done all of you! More pictures are available on our Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/northhertsspeakers

Dan improvising with the mic and Dorothy, Andrea and Trevor on the stall

While you are visiting our Facebook page, please click the Like button (if you like) and follow us. If you want souvenir photos, that is where you will be able to download them (I hope) as there isn’t space to put them all here.

Dan Winterbourne is pictured above creatively engaging passers-by and supported by volunteers Dorothy Molloy, Andrea Lee and Trevor Fisher. Thanks again everyone for all your help on the day.

We are looking forward to welcoming some of our visitors to the stall to our meetings at the Sun Hotel in Hitchin on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month. Your can try us out for free for the first two visits with no pressure to speak if you don’t want to and plenty of opportunities if you do.


Quest for Knowledge

Our meeting on 7th August was well attended with over 20 people enjoying speeches and tabletopics. Oliver, one of our newest members, pictured below, won best speech of the evening for his first Icebreaker speech called Quest for Knowledge. Well done!

Oliver wins best speech for his Icebreaker called Quest for Knowledge. Also pictured are Peter on the left and Bradley on the right.
Well done Oliver – great first speech!

Our President, Bradley, gave an interesting speech called “Can you run at 200 mph?” Rose told a story about “Little Johnny” and Andrea introduced some excellent Table Topics. These are where members of the audience get the chance to give an impromptu talk for one to two minutes on a selected topic.

Dan, another new member, won best evaluator for the evening with his first ever evaluation. And our guest, Peter, won the best table topics speech on his first night.

Another first for the evening was for Karl who presided as Toastmaster of the evening and did a great job keeping us all in order.

Photo shows Dan Winterbourne receiving his aware for best evaluator, together with Bradley Peters, our President and Peter, our star guest of the night.
Dan, Bradley and Peter – Great work guys!

Come and join us next week upstairs at The Sun Hotel in Hitchin. The meeting starts at 7.30pm and runs till around 9.45 or 10pm, depending on the number of speakers. It’s great fun and you can try it out for free.


Speakers in the Square

Rose Saliba

Saturday 25th of May was our first adventure into Hitchin Town Square. Our purpose was to let people in the local community know about our club and how it could help them to achieve their personal goals.

I have to say that it was a great success. The weather was great, the town was packed and we had a strong and committed group of Toastmasters who made the day. We even had a Toastmaster from Harrow and a Toastmaster from Stevenage Speakers club.

Salman, Karl & John meet spiderman!

Before the event, we had very little in the way of publicity material. We didn’t have any flyers or a banner to put up on the gazebo. Our club worked together to get the copy and designs done for the flyers and the banner which we used along the back of the gazebo. There was some work to do and compromises to made to suit all the members of the committee but we got it all done in just under two weeks! A special thanks to Salman, Lynne, Andrea and John.

Dorothy

Of course there are some things that we would have done differently. If we were to do this again we would have started working on the publicity a lot earlier and we would have had separate meetings dedicated to the design of the publicity material. This would have been much easier but the reality is that we all have day jobs and family so finding the time can be tricky.

Mandy (Stevenage Speakers)

For myself, I would aim to be more positive. I was worried that we wouldn’t have flyers, that I would forget something or that I would be alone at the stall! My anxiety about the event going wrong was not motivating, yet our club rallied round the idea and it was a great day. I really enjoyed the enthusiasm of everyone and in reality there was only one small problem which was sorted out by 10am!

David Phelops (Harrow)

David even sang “O solo Mio!” which certainly stopped passers by in their tracks.

The microphone and PA made a big difference. So much more interesting than a table full of flyers. Of course you would expect a speakers club to do some Public Speaking wouldn’t you?

Karl Hope

Funnily, we were all a bit reticent to use the mic at first!

We also managed to get members of the public to get up and speak which was great. Some people also asked us if we could help them to train students or to help out with providing some speakers.

It takes courage to speak.

Well done everyone! Let’s do this again!

Next time don’t forget the sun lotion!