Highlights from London Communicators speech contest

From left to right: Jake Pieczonka (Competition Chair), Piers Ronan (speech & evaluation contestant), Joe Frigolette (speech contestant), Dinah Tobias (speech & evaluation contestant), Neil Murphy (evaluation contestant), Michael Isaac (speech contestant), Paul Adams (speech contestant), Daniel Naujoks (evaluation contestant).

A massive congratulations to all those who competed in the London Communicators’ International Speech Contest and Evaluation Contest on Monday 11th March 2019.  I am sure those of you that were lucky enough to attend would agree that this was an engaging evening and a masterclass, with speeches and evaluations of the highest quality!

International Speech Contest

In the International Speech Contest, five of our London Communicators’ members delivered a speech on a subject of their own choice.

Paul Adams kicked off with a compelling and highly emotive speech entitled ‘Emma at the Platform’ in which he shared a very gripping personal story of a woman who lived life to the full through her travels and adventures.  She took risks and did what many people only dream of, but met a fateful end.

Jake presenting Joe, one of our most recent members and the speech contest winner, with the certificate.

Next up was Dinah Tobias, our Club President. With a well-structured and entertaining speech, Dinah set-out why we ought to at least sometimes forget about conforming to society’s and social media’s perception of what we ‘should’ be doing and instead do what we really want, when we want! Dinah once again utilised props to emphasise the message littering the stage with handwritten notes – hopefully somebody cleared those up ;)

Joe Frigolette, one of our newest London Communicators’ members, followed next with the winning speech! With his speech entitled ‘Tell Me No’, Joseph shared personal experiences in which he and family defied the odds to overcome adversity and defy limitations imposed by others.  Joe skilfully used movement around the stage coupled with an array of other techniques to engage the audience throughout his speech. A particularly amusing highlight was when Jake, our Competition Chair for the evening involuntarily become caught up as a character in Joseph’s storey and was on the receiving end of some strong words.

Michael Isaac delivered a humorous yet informative speech entitled ‘Sugar: the scourge of modern life’. Did you know that sugar is more addictive than Cocaine?

Finally, it was Piers Ronan who took to the stage with his speech ‘The Plastic Bank’. This was another informative speech which brought to the audience’s attention the impact plastic waste is having on the planet and some of the great work being done to reduce plastic waste.

Evaluation contest:

After a short break, we moved on to the Evaluation contest.

Jake presenting Dinah, our Club President and the evaluation contest winner, with the certificate.

In this section, four contestants (Daniel Naujoks, Neal Murphy, Dinah Tobias and Piers Ronan) listened to a speech from our mystery speaker, Ariel. He gave a fantastic speech on how he uses different communication styles which he has developed through Toastmasters in different aspects of his life. With a clever cooking analogy throughout the speech, Ariel referred to his skills as a ‘pantry of communication styles’. Given the very high quality of this speech, our evaluators had to dig deep to find any recommendations for improvement.  The judges, who all came from other Toastmasters’ clubs, decided to score Dinah as the winner of this contest.

Once again a huge congratulations goes to our winners and our contestants! Also a big thanks to the judges, those who supported the event in other roles, and attendees - it would not have been possible without you!

The winners of the International Speech Contest, Joe Frigolette, and the Evaluation Contest, Dinah Tobias, will now progress onto the Area 47 finals, where they will be competing against members from other London Toastmasters’ clubs. Please come and show your support for Dinah and Joe on 26th March at London Business School (room LT3) from 6.45pm.

Best of luck Dinah and Joe!

Written by Matt Blow, Club Public Relations Officer.