Susan Rayner

Division A Soundbites

by

Take inspiration from Division A

Antonia Harrison DTM

President, Shilling Speakers, Area A1

2020/21 Division A Director

When not supporting her own club which she started in January, the other 20 clubs in Division A or visiting Toastmasters events around the world, Antonia focuses on her business as a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Breakthrough Business Coach for Women Entrepreneurs.  She stood for Parliament in 2017 and 2019.  Learning foreign languages is her lifelong interest as well as being on the water, preferably on a motor cruiser.

Antonia’s Toastmasters journey began in 2009 in a Flemish club in Belgium, Toastmasters Hasselt, where she was a founder member and gave her Icebreaker speech in Dutch.  She later became President, a Charter Member of Toastmasters Fonske Leuven and Club Sponsor of Toastmasters Maastrict. On returning to the UK in 2012, she joined Solent Speakers in Fareham where she also became President before Area A1 Director in 2018/19.

See what the clubs in Division A have been doing during September and October

Basingstoke Speakers

Basingstoke Speakers had a joint meeting with Noida toastmasters of District 41, India on 12 September. The meeting was very successful and we hope to have many more joint meetings in the future. Why not watch our meeting recording.
Haritosh Srivastav DTM, VPE, Basingstoke Speakers.

TEDxSouthampton 2021


Russell Streeter ACB ALB, A1 Area Director and member of Solent Speakers in Fareham, will be speaking at TEDx Southampton in May 2021 deferred from 11 November 2020.https://tedxsoton.com/
This all-day event will feature creative, thought-provoking inspiration around our theme of Human to Human Connection in all its forms and includes a focus on Innovation, Connectedness and Personal Potential.

Russell is a finance leader with nearly two decades of experience in insurance and financial services. His outlook on life has been dramatically shaped by his family’s experience of childhood cancer. Russell’s talk is a powerful and emotional story about Human to Human Connection when a family member is seriously ill. He shares the important lessons he has learnt and discusses the vital contributions that everyone can make in such circumstances to save lives.

Salisbury Speakers Discussion Panel Experts

September 18th saw Salisbury Speakers host the 3rd in a series of panel discussions this year. This one was an exciting discussion on the subject of homelessness, with Salisbury MP John Glen, Salisbury Trust for the Homeless Project Leader Louise Davis, and Liz Dore, (Salisbury Speakers Member) of South West Advocacy Network, the new organisation she has just set up in Salisbury.

A series of questions were posed including ‘What lessons can we learn from the pandemic?’ and ‘” what will the end of the eviction ban mean for homelessness?’  A lively discussion followed, concluding with questions from the audience. Salisbury Speakers member Richard Livesey hosted the meeting very professionally, asking panellists to reflect on each others’ contributions and moving smoothly from one question to another.

Previous discussions were: September 7th ‘Perceptions of Influence in the Age of Social Media’, again hosted by Richard Livesey with panellists: previous Salisbury Speakers member Wendy Searle who famously made a record-breaking skiing solo to the South Pole in 2019/20 together with Richard Belle, a local Social Media expert and Barbara Saph, DTM Salisbury Speakers member.


Finally, an in house panel of Rob Dewing, Alexandra Gillies, who works with sustainable tourism in Africa and Liz Dore discussed ‘Do You Think Plastic Should be Banned?’ on August 3rd.
Taking part in a panel discussion is very different to presenting to an audience, especially via a video conference but Salisbury Speakers are expecting to hold more of these during the year and will welcome members from other clubs.

Chaseside Speakers host the World Champion of Public Speaking

Area 42’s only corporate club, Chaseside Speakers, a JPMorgan club, started their year off with a bang with a keynote speech from last year’s World Champion of Public Speaking, Aaron Beverley, a JPM employee from the States.


Distinguished Toastmaster Haritosh Srivastav

interviews Aaron Beverly.


Watch Aaron’s winning speech.

Chaseside is using the online format to its fullest by also joining forces with another D91 JPMorgan club to run joint meetings to boost the number of members at meetings and are looking to possibly extend the meetings to even further afield and branch out to other clubs for Global meetings.

David Matoe Club President is keen to have guest speakers and workshops to add variety and interest to meetings so would love to hear from anyone who has something they can share with the club.

Bristol Central Speakers

At Bristol Central Speakers, we wanted to keep our high-energy and collaborative club culture alive even in the new virtual world. Taking advantage of the fact that any club in the world is now only a click away, BCS hosted a joint meeting with a club in Osaka, Japan. Separated by 8 hours in time, we showed up excited to meet the members of Naniwa Toastmasters.

We quickly learned to add ‘San’ after everyone’s name and joked about not being disqualified for going overtime (Osaka rules!). It was an incredibly rewarding experience that showed us how we’re all so similar even though miles apart.

The feedback from our club members has been fantastic. This idea of a joint club meeting is all thanks to BCS’ Secretary, Polly Thompson, and has inspired us to keep exploring the world via Zoom. Who knows where we’ll (virtually) land next.

Solent Speakers


Solent Speakers (A1) ran an Evaluations event on 29 September starting with an “Enlightening Evaluations” workshop from 2016 D91 Evaluations Champion, Ga Lok Chung, teaching us valuable techniques including the COD and GLOVE methods. We then heard three very different speeches and offered a round-robin evaluation of each
  1. Lucinda Harman DTM “Finding Freeman in Confinement”, a TEDx rehearsal
  2. Beatrice Freeman, L5 Preparing to Speak Professionally “Including the Neurodiverse: My Experience”
  3. Dagmara Elminowska, L1 Evaluation & Feedback 2 “The Problems of Being Tall”

42 people attended, included members from abroad. The full meeting is shown at: https://youtu.be/MmFZoAp63d8

Shilling Speakers “In Front of the Camera”

Shilling Speakers in Area A1 hosted a workshop with Luis Dorbecker DTM from Mexico called “In Front of the Camera” to help people with better lighting, framing, backgrounds, camera height etc.  It was particularly aimed at anyone taking part in Toastmasters contests.  You can see the recording at https://youtu.be/gaSPfwovYPc

Division A Conference & Contests

Saturday 7th November 09:45-14:15

The Division Finals of the Humorous Speech Contest and Table Topics will include eight participants in each as Division A has four Areas.  Alongside, there will be keynote speeches from Gavin Meikle DTM on the hidden depths of Pathways and TEDx Speaker and multi-award-winning Deepak ‘DJ’ Justin from D82 with “Unlock the Sherlock: The Art of Cracking a Winner of a Speech”.

Register here:  https://bit.ly/3jqyYOT

Celebrate our success with us

15 members of Division A achieved Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) status in 2019-20.

Keith Oliver, Shilling Speakers and Spinnaker Speakers, Area A1, is the only member so far to achieve DTM in Division A this Toastmaster year.

Many congratulations to all 16 new DTMs!!!


We have 42 other awards to celebrate

Pathways Level 1

Claire Jewell, Tjark Schoenfeld, Deborah Franzoni, Xavier Graham, Neil Richings, Philip Gladwell, Michelle Pinrod, Roberto Fuerte, Paul Molyneux, Clappas Petrescu, Alfonso Eduardo, Andrea Righi, Philippa Gray, Caroline Brewer, Pallavia Pawar, Philippa Doyle, Clive Stocker, Jonny Pardoe, Eric Skates, Flora Ellis, Arooj Raza, Lancina Bamba, Olorunbunmi Durowoju, Gemma Nevers, Nina Fahler, Rory McGill.

Pathways Level 2

Mike Burrows, Niroopika Sivapatham, Roman Abylkhatov, Cate Wilson, Eric Skates, Rick Simmonds, Lancina Bamba, Gemma Nevers.

Pathways Level 3

Ariba Surani, Rick Simmonds

Pathways Level 4

Rob Hoblin

Pathways Level 5

Rob Hoblin, Richard Livesey

Contest season is upon us

by

This year, it is all online. Time to keep calm and compete!

To assist with your preparations, our District Chief Judge, Neil Coleman delivered a fantastic webinar on the rules and regulations and shared tips to help you all. The webinar is available on the District 91 website for you all to review, along with support documentation. There are complimentary Zoom training sessions which Divisions have created to support you to, do seek these out. Good luck to all.

The District Conference in May 2021 will now be a virtual event, in line with Toastmasters International guidance, that all contests at Area, Division and District level, have to be online in this Toastmasters year. As a District, we have the experience of delivering a fantastic virtual conference, so let’s build on this. To head up the conference team, we require a Conference Director. In performing this role myself in 2018, this served as my HPL project and was one of the most stretching, rewarding and fun roles I had undertaken within Toastmasters. This opportunity would definitely fit someone with great organisational skills, that can build a team to support them, combat challenges and be a Zoomin human. If you are interested in becoming our next Conference Director, or simply looking to volunteer to be part of the May 2021 conference team, contact me

Education and Training

The education achievements are flowing in thick and fast with close to 350 awards so far.  Over 140 members have received their Level 1 award, through to 16 members completing their chosen path, 3 members completing the Pathway Mentoring Program and 11 members attaining Distinguished Toastmaster. Congratulations to you all.

The District webinar series is now well underway, with a full programme scheduled for your all on Sunday’s evenings, through to the end of November. There’s a blend of personal development and Toastmasters specific webinar opportunities for you to join. The details are also linked through the District Calendar.

To support the webinar series, the planned relaunch of the Trainers Bureau is now scheduled for the autumn. This will provide those members seeking to step away from purely delivering speeches to develop and enhance their training skills.

A date for your diary!

Save the date for a quiz evening on Friday 4 December from the Program Quality Team

Do you remember David and Carmen?

by

Let’s see how they are getting on. Carmen thoroughly enjoyed her first meeting at Club X. She did a table topic and signed up that day! David did almost slip through the cracks, however as the committee of the club did a full audit of the club tools, his email was found and the VP Public Relations of that club followed up with him and invited him as a guest to their next meeting. Because their VP Membership followed up appropriately with him thereafter, he too has since signed up.

When times are tough or disruption occurs, it helps to be reminded about our ‘WHY’ and core reason for being. Sometimes all it takes it a return to some fundamental, often basic processes to get things back on track again. District 91 now launches the ‘Lead to Achieve’ initiative -mainly focusing on those who are trying to contact us via toastmasters.org but giving us all the opportunity to review and ensure that we are doing the ‘hygiene’ things that make our club successful.

The way we do things may be reviewed and changed and some clubs have adapted very to being able to bring members on board in this new environment. At the time of writing, 6 clubs have achieved the covered Smedley Award.

You can hear from the President of one of those clubs, Dan Magill – Society Speakers about their ‘how’.

Our 80/20 challenge for the October 2020 renewal period is on. At the time of writing, 16 clubs have so far retained 20+ members and I’ll be calculating those with 80%+ at the end of the period. We recognise that some of our members may move on at this time for a host of reasons. It’s important for us to understand why and that our doors or virtual platforms remain open to those that want to return when they are ready.

I’d like to conclude this month by remembering our organisational mission:

‘We empower individuals to become more effective communicators and leaders.’

We’ll explore leadership a little more next month along with seeing how a returner to toastmasters is getting on after a breakaway as well as David and Carmen.

The types of communication channels we have are numerous and ever-changing and every now and again it doesn’t hurt to take stock of what they are. I hope you’ll continue to utilise your Toastmasters journey to flex and refine your communication skills.

Rupa Datta – District 91 Club Growth Director 2020-2021

We’re deep into membership renewals season

by

We’re deep into membership renewals season and with online meetings looking like they’ll be our only option for a little while yet, many club committees are wondering how they can use the platform and harness the technology to find new members and continue to grow their clubs.

The good news is that many of our District 91 clubs are growing.

Since online meetings began, Society Speakers Club in London has increased their membership by 50%. Seven new members have joined since the start of the new Toastmaster year and the club have bagged themselves The Smedley Award, which is given to all clubs who sign-up at least 5 new members between August 01 and September 30.

We caught up with Society Speakers’ Club President, Dan Magill to get some hints and tips around what we can be doing to grow our club membership during these challenging times.

Dan, congratulations to Society Speakers for winning The Smedley Award. What’s the secret to your success? 

Thanks. I think first and foremost, for us as a club committee, it has been about not chasing membership goals and recognition to the point where it maybe starts to become a self-defeating policy. It can be tempting in these strange times for clubs to become a little obsessive over attracting and signing up new members, but when that over-eagerness starts to come across in club meetings and engagements with potential new members, it can become a little off-putting.

Some clubs say they are having trouble attracting new guests into the online environment. How has that worked out for Society Speakers?

We have been very lucky with regard to first-time guests coming along to online meetings. Although, in truth, it has probably been less about luck and more about the outstanding work both the current club committee and the previous committees have done in promoting the club.

Since I’ve been a member, we’ve always had a fantastic Meetup page and club website, which emphasises how Society Speakers is more than just a place to develop public speaking and leadership skills.

We have a really fun, friendly atmosphere at the club and we use pre-lockdown phots of us enjoying club meetings and having club socials together.

I think, especially at the moment when people can’t socialise as much as they may like, it makes a real difference for new visitors to our Meetup and website pages to see what a friendly bunch we are. Toastmasters is all about having a friendly, supportive and safe space in which to learn and grow. Nothing can convey that to your prospective new members as much as pictures of existing members thriving in the club environment.

Have you done anything new to attract new visitors since we moved online?

Yes, as a club we held a summer series of workshops, which were aimed at new and existing Toastmasters. We had three workshop presenters on each evening, and they covered a range of really useful topics from, building rapport and adding humour, to the art of storytelling and improving your table topics.

By covering so many different topics in each session, it meant there was something for everyone and we really did see an increase in first-time guests.

I think that by occasionally positioning our clubs as outlets for public speaking education, we can attract a certain demographic that maybe we don’t quite attract when we only talk about practicing our public speaking skills. Obviously, Toastmasters is all about the practice and the experience, but from time to time, let’s step forward and promote ourselves as the experts in our field.

Would you say it’s the speaking skills of your experienced members that attract new members to your club?

Strangely, no. I think new members are most attracted by other new members. It’s always great to see an experienced speaker with lots of outstanding speaking skills on display and think that maybe one day you’ll be able to speak as well as they can. But, in truth, new members take most encouragement from those who are also just starting their journey.

If a nervous guest turns up to your club and sees three DTMs strutting their stuff, I wouldn’t expect they’d go away thinking, “Yes, I can do that too.” They’re far more likely to find the courage to come back and give it a go themselves if they see other ‘newbies’ nervously finding their way through their first speeches.

In that respect, I think it’s always more important to have as many new speakers on your meeting agenda as you can. I don’t subscribe to a club deciding that somebody isn’t ready to be Toastmaster or couldn’t possibly evaluate yet, or anything like that. I think we should encourage (not pressure) new members to take on as many of the roles as possible, as early as possible.

So, let’s say you’ve got the interested first-time guests into your meeting and you’ve got a nice mix of experience and inexperience on the agenda; what tips can you give us for converting those guests into new club members?

Every member is different and will join for their own personal reasons, so the best you can do is simply your best.

Make club meetings fun and try to involve everyone. We try to make the warmup session at the start of each meeting more of a game than a simple speaking exercise. We acknowledge and speak to guests at the start of the meeting and try to involve as many of them as possible in the Table Topics session. We’ve tweaked the way we run Table Topics since moving online. We now have ‘on the spot’ evaluations directly after each speech, which gives so many more people that chance to be involved and keeps things fresh and engaging at a point in the meeting where people can be starting to become a little less focussed.

Most importantly of all though, is to respond to your prospective member’s questions and enquiries as soon as possible.

If you see a new club contact request, respond to it right away. If a guest at your meeting says they’d be interested in finding out more, take their details and send them more information that day. It’s so easy for prospective new members to visit lots and lots of online clubs before they make their final decision and if your club is taking too long to respond to them, they’ll more than likely move on and try somewhere else.

Thanks, Dan! There are lots there for our clubs to think about.

Do you have any tips and tricks you could pass on to our clubs?

Get in touch

Set your voice free with Beyond Toast

by

Ever listened to a podcast or the radio and thought I could do that? Now’s your chance as the Beyond Toast podcast is looking for guests. Set your voice free.

Beyond Toast is a podcast where Toastmasters/Public Speakers/Lovers of language are invited to discuss food in an engaging and light-hearted way. It is inspired by the challenge of adequately conveying the strong emotions typically evoked by the senses, particularly taste, through speech.

The discussion is wide-ranging but framed around food and the central role it plays in our lives, family and relationships. If you have ever eaten, you have all the expertise you need. If you enjoyed the experience enough to talk about it to friends, then you have the makings of a perfect guest.

Each episode fuses a discussion with a guest with selected examples of poetry and prose and typically lasts for ~25 minutes (perfect for the short commute). It is distributed weekly via popular podcast platforms.

It is a great opportunity to stretch yourself, develop your skills and take your Toastmasters journey in a fun and interesting new direction. If you are interested check-out an episode and if you are keen to take part contact the show at info@beyondtoast.uk