You've taken that first step of coming along to your first meeting at St Paul's Speakers... but what can you expect..."I'm going to be sat in room filled with strangers for two hours, what's it going to be like?"

Everyone that has walked through our doors for the first time has had those very same thoughts.  Rest assured, from the moment you arrive, we will do our utmost to make you feel welcome and ensure everything is explained along the way.  As you arrive at the venue, our Sergeant-at-Arms will greet you at the door and invite you to register at our sign in sheet.  Feel free at this point to take any available seat, and chat to anyone in the room!

The meeting commences with opening comments from the Club President, who then introduces the host for the evening, also known as the "Toastmaster".  Once the format of the evening has been explained, the Toastmaster will invite up to further functionaries (Timekeeper & Grammarian) to explain their roles.  Unique to St Paul's Speakers, we then dedicate a few minutes to an Educational speech - it's our way of giving back to the members the benefit of our experience throughout the year.

Next, we have the "meat" of the evening - the prepared speeches.  Each Speaker will deliver a speech on a topic of their choosing, trying to meet the objectives of the project in the process as well as keep to the alloted time.  Members of the audience are invited to provide written feedback to the speakers as well as vote on who they thought was best speaker of the night.  The Timekeeper will report how the speakers fared on time, followed by the Sergeant-at-Arms who will conclude the first half of the meeting with guest introductions.

After a ten minute interval for socialising, the meeting resumes with verbal Evaluations of the speakers from the first half (which in themselves are timed and voted upon).  Unpredictability then reigns as we enter the inpromptu section of the programme, also known as "Table Topics".  With any member of the audience up for grabs, the Table Topic Master will select individuals to come up on stage and perform an unprepared speech on a selected topic for 1-2mins.  These are again timed, evaluated (this time by the Table Topics Evaluator) and voted upon by the audience.

Finally, the evening is drawn to a close with reports from our Grammarian and General Evaluator, as well as the awards ceremony and round-up of Club Business by the Club President.