At our meeting on Thursday 2nd February we invited a guest speaker, Paul Laidlaw of H & H Auctioneers and of TV fame, to share his knowledge and experience of auctioneering with us. He gave a most interesting, amusing and informative talk on his profession and then joined enthusiastically in the rest of our meeting. This was in preparation for our following meeting on 16th February when the theme for the evening was a Mock Auction. None of us had done this before, so we needed an expert to show us how it is done!
Our Mock Auction (with mock money!) got members to bring an object to 'sell' and make a sales pitch for it before President Christine Shuttleworth, our 'Auctioneer,' invited bids. The objects were very varied and so were the sales pitches, some of which were even true!
Our members' experience of speaking varies from a month or two to nearly thirty years, but as this shows, we never stop learning new skills and often discovering some quite unexpected abilities.
Carlisle Speakers go Auctioneering
Workshops 21/1/12
Saturday, 21st January saw Carlisle and District Speakers Club trying out a new venture. In response to requests for some general training on Public Speaking, the club organized some business-based workshops at Morton Community Centre.
Christine Shuttleworth, club president, welcomed more than 20 people to the workshops on Chairmanship, Presentation and Impromptu Speaking skills.
The workshops, aimed at providing tips on improving techniques on Public Speaking, as well as suggestions to reduce stress and anxiety of this number one fear in life today, were warmly received with comments such as, from one participant from a voluntary organization:
“A brilliant course, I really enjoyed it, I am taking away some positive tips & skills I can go on to use”.
Many would like more sessions like these and the club will have to think about how these might be financed.
Susan Trafford, Education Director said that, “Training for skills in Public Speaking is often low on an employer’s agenda, but employees with excellent speaking skills increase opportunities for maximizing the marketing potential of any organisation, promoting their products, be it a car, increasing take up of a project, or informing the electorate of a change in policy”.
“Training of this type is difficult to source locally at reasonable cost, so we were delighted to be able to provide an afternoon of training that has been so well received.”
The workshops were attended by people from the public, private and voluntary sectors.
At the end of the afternoon all those attending were able to practise their newly acquired skills choosing whether to speak from the stage, or use a microphone, maybe for the first time.
The afternoon was rounded off by a demonstration of a Speech by Gordon Little entitled, ‘Breaking the Barrier’, a personal account of achieving public speaking competence.
As well as attendance certificates, participants were given tickets enabling them to attend the Border Area Speaking Competitions, to be held next Sunday afternoon, 29/1/12 at Morton Community Centre.