The evening was begun by Marijke Habermann, who, despite initial stumbling, delivered a very interesting speech on the mantra “Do what you love, love what you do.” In an insightful speech, she explained that this attitude can devaluate the actual work you do and not make you live in the moment.
Zhe Nie, in his ice-breaker speech titled “The journey of running” took everyone of us on a journey with him through his life experiences that were always connected with running. With humour and originality, he mastered the task of speaking in front of the club for the first time wonderfully.
Next up was Vaclav Matousek, who, in a fun and unique way, described how important that spark of ingenuity in humans is and how, therefore, he is an optimist when thinking about the future. He managed to present complex and usually rather boring information in an easily understandable and exciting way.
Our last speaker tonight was Alister Smith, who made everybody laugh with his use of props: He chose to speak about costume parties and what he learnt from them, connecting interesting bits of history with funny stories and pictures from costume parties he attended. He convinced the audience and won the award for best speaker.
After an informative evaluation round, which Paul Seaman won due to an outstanding evaluation, Thomas Portenseigne took us on a trip around this world’s museums during the Table Topics. There are many special and funny museums in this world, and the Table Topics speakers had to make up reasons on the spot why we should all visit for example a museum about UFOs or one about bananas. Adrian Engler won Best Table Topic Speaker by holding a hilarious speech about a museum in India, which exhibits toilets and his experience of toilets in Russia.
All in all, it was a great evening, and we are all looking forward to next meeting, where we will be holding an international speech and evaluation contest. I encourage everyone, members and guest alike to come and take part in this exciting event!
