The Speedrun in Summary

Here's a little showreel of the whole speedrun.

Its quality isn't very good, because I had to make it from Zoom or smartphone recordings, often without very good audio, and from scans, screenshots and PowerPoints. Also my video editing skills are nothing special. But this blog was never about film-making and I'm not intending to make it about that, now.

This may be the final post to this blog. This has been a blast! I really enjoyed the whole process. And I must end on another "Thank You" - not just to everyone who is listed at my acknowledgements post, but to everyone involved in any way or in the audience at any point - and to you if you've enjoyed reading this blog. Thank you.

Pathway Completion Certificate

 

UPDATE: And here's the pin:

Basecamp Scorecard - After the Speedrun

 

Reflect on Your Path

This was the very last speech of the pathway, given at Cardiff Toastmasters exactly two weeks after the icebreaker of the same path. 

Here it is:

I tried to set up the meeting as a livestream. I had invited everyone to it, but since I hadn't had a following during the speedrun it seemed unlikely anyone would attend online. In fact I was delighted to see Aki Yoshida of Sapporo Pioneers Toastmasters, who left this lovely message:

The main reason I was determined to get it on Zoom was so that videos would be available for this blog. Here is Ken Evans' very kind evaluation:

And here are extracts from his evaluation form:

Here are the evaluation slips. I quite like the really big one at the top:

I was delighted to win "Best Speaker" this evening:

Finally, there was a presentation, which I was really chuffed with:

A massive "Thank You" with knobs on, to Cardiff Toastmasters' members and committee.

Wye Knot

As a social event, I thought the Wye Knot meeting, and its continuation afterwards in the pub opposite, was the most fun I had during the speedrun. They are a very friendly and supportive club. And while I'm supremely grateful to all the clubs I met on zoom, without whom the speedrun could not have succeeded, I do think Toastmasters is at its best when conducted live face-to-face.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I struggled more with the level 2 speeches than others, but in the end I was quite proud of this one. I'm grateful for some conversations I had with Helyn Ashford and with Alistair Driscoll on the evening of the meeting, which helped me to inject some meaning into a speech which had previously - in my head - just been a series of anecdotes.

I don't have any videos. Here are the evaluation slips. You have no idea how long I had to spend with a scanner, printer and double-sided-sticky-tape to achieve this:

I had another role, too. I was doing the "Active Listening" project, which involves being the Table Topics Master for the evening. I used a theme which I've done before: "The H G Wells Time Travel Club", in which the audience have survived their journey from 1922, and we have some experts in the room to give them a briefing on various aspects of modern life.

Here are extracts from Rick Cooper's evaluation of it:

Lead in Any Situation

I don't have any videos of my "Lead in Any Situation" talk, although I do have the PowerPoint slide set that I used, and here they are. My 360 degree evaluations were mostly positive, which was nice, although I did speak as honestly as I could in the talk about some of the conflicts we had to deal with.

  

Advancing Alaska

I thought the most pleasant club that I visited was Advancing Alaska who (as I expect you can work out from their name) are an advanced club in Alaska, USA.

The speech I presented there was The Limerick Toastmasters Club, of which they were very appreciative. I got loads of positive and useful feedback, in the form of multiple evaluations.

As I told them, I would love to join their club. But the 3:30am start, my time, on a work night, would make that somewhat impractical!

But it was lovely to visit.

Trust Taxation

Here's my "Trust Taxation" course. This wasn't given at Toastmasters, but is instead a course given at my work. I give a monthly training course, and it was delightful to be able to merge that with the pathway speedrun. Like the Charity Conference a few days later, it was good to include some "real world" public speaking in the pathway. And I'd like to extend a special thank you to  Alex Keedwell from my Toastmasters club, who attended to evaluate.

A disclaimer is needed. This talk is purely an educational course for its live attendees. Everything I say in it is a massive oversimplification of the actual rules, which are very complex. Neither I nor my firm can take any responsibility if you act on anything contained here. Instead, take professional advice based on the specific facts of your situation. 

There is a limit to how big a file size you can upload to a blog, so in order to cover the whole course, I've divided it into five episodes:

Episode 1: Interest-in-Possession Trusts:

Episode 2: Non-Interest-in-Possession Trusts:

Episode 3: Inheritance Tax:

Episode 4: Trust Classification Quiz:

Episode 5: Q&A:

There have been some previous blogs with material about this talk too. For the handouts, see here:

https://pathwayspeedrun.blogspot.com/2022/10/trust-taxation-handouts.html

And for the quiz answers, see here:

https://pathwayspeedrun.blogspot.com/2022/10/trust-taxation-quiz-answers.html

Elsinore Keynote - Didcot

I travelled up to Didcot to give this speech, and stayed overnight at a hotel. This was the middle speech of a three-speech day: I gave the Trust Taxation talk at Geldards around lunchtime, then drove to Didcot to give this one, live, mid-evening, then my speech at the New York Toastmasters at around midnight by Zoom from the hotel room. See here, here and here.

If you've been wondering: No, the order in which I've posted these blogs bears no relationship to the order in which I gave the speeches.

It was lovely to visit Didcot - they are a very friendly club with a pleasant atmosphere and an interesting mix of speakers because they are hybrid - a group of friendly locals in the room, and some far-flung international participants attending by Zoom. It was particularly nice to meet Erica face-to-face, when she has been so integral to the success of the speedrun.

I think there's some potential in my "Elsinore Keynote" speech. It's pretty flawed at this point, but there's something to build on. And "raising a toast" got a big laugh. This was the first time I've given it, and it's a bit of a mix of ideas which were thoroughly thought through, ideas which I had in the days leading up to the speech, and ideas that I was improvising on the spot. My script had a few items written on it like "just explain seriously in your own words".

Here's the video. One point that needs explanation is that the microphone doesn't capture applause, laughter or audience reactions, including anything said by anyone outside the speaking area. So there are various points where my character is inexplicably silent. The ending especially must have been as mystifying to the guests watching on Zoom as it is in this video:

Anyway, here it is. My opening line, "the monarchy must live on", was the title of the speech immediately before mine.

I've been asked what I've learned from the speedrun and have struggled to answer. I always say that at this early stage I don't know! I think though that one thing I'll benefit from in the long-term is having seen myself on video a lot, which I haven't much before, and realising the need to be more static. This speech is a particularly good example of one which would be improved if the only movements I was making were the body-language required by the script. 

Here are the handwritten evaluation slips:

And here's the evaluation:

Also, it was nice to win the best table topics award, for this little speech. "Cozy" was the word of the day:

A Difficult Audience at Valleys and Vale Toastmasters

This may have been my favourite speech of the whole run.

However I think a few points need explanation.

• This was a speech from the level 4 project "Managing a Difficult Audience". The idea of the project is that various members of the audience are tasked with disrupting my speech in various different ways, and as you'll see, they succeed to some extent.
• Even so I think this is quite a useful talk on Toastmasters Mentoring and I'll be recommending it as a resource to members of my own club. I think it's much better in that regard than the recent educational I did on the same topic! If you've come to this blog for that reason: guys you'll need to tune-out the game we are playing throughout where everybody else tries to derail my speech and I try to keep giving it.
• Because of the position of the microphone I notice my "yes" and "yeah" - which are me just encouraging someone to keep talking - come out so much louder than the speaker as to give the impression I'm trying to interrupt them or drown them out. I hope it didn't come over that way for real.
• Julia (the female voice in the middle of the audience) was the most effective disruptor. The instructions for the disruptors tell them to stop disrupting and stay quiet once I have engaged with them once, so I made myself a bit of a hostage-to-fortune by asking people not to do that, at the start. However as I mention in the speech, while her interruptions are designed to put me off my stride (at which they succeeded!) everything she actually says, both positive and negative, totally hits the nail on the head.
• I couldn't tell if Nigel (at the back on my right, your left) was being tongue-in-cheek with his argument - that Toastmasters Mentoring isn't the same as real mentoring. With hindsight I wish I'd stayed silent longer and let him develop it. I would probably have agreed with his second objection - which was that letting potential mentees express a preference for who their mentor should be would lead to a small number of people doing all the mentoring - except that I've tried exactly that at Cardiff and it hasn't been my experience.   
• I could not even tell if Bryan (front row on my left, your right) was intending to be a disruptor. In fact his contributions were really helpful and brought in some useful points I might not otherwise have made.
• Anyway, this was one of the high points of the speedrun for me. Thank you to Valleys and Vale for inviting me, and for playing along. I really enjoyed it.

Before we get to the video, here's the screenshot which I refer to in it:

And here's the video:

"Stultify" was the word of the day.

Turning next to the evaluation from Kay, I thought it was really good - very fair as to both the strengths and weaknesses of what I did, and containing several points I will incorporate if I do this project again. (UPDATE: this project is a non-elective on another pathway I'm following, so I will indeed have to do it again, and fairly soon.)

Before getting to the video, here are some extracts from the evaluation form, and a whole page of extra notes from Kay. If only all evaluators were this thorough!

And here's the video: 

Finally, here are the audience feedback slips. 

The last one is interesting. The point she made was that I make all my gestures with my right hand, and leave my left arm swinging, which is distracting. Indeed you can see that in the video. It is.

UPDATE JANUARY 2023:

Here are my suggestions for disrupting a speech:

Success!!!

Yay! I did it!

Of course the title could still be stripped from me. Toastmasters International have done a drug test. Apparently they've found traces of Guinness in my system...

Anyway, that's not the end of the blog. I still have videos to post and meetings I want to write-up.

Thank you so, so, much for everyone who helped along the way.

Also big thanks to Cardiff Toastmasters for the wine and the card.

Scorecard Day 15