Appointed President of Cairo ToastMasters Club

Appointed President of Cairo ToastMasters Club

During August, I was appointed President of Cairo ToastMasters Club, being involved with the community of entrepreneurs in Egypt, running Egypreneur, a very entrepreneurial future is in the making now for Cairo ToastMasters Club.

I’ll be doing a lot of promotions to ToastMasters and want to expand the membership of its members beyond the club to starting new clubs all around Cairo.

Microsoft Geeks Day, Entrepreneurship Session

Microsoft Geeks Day, Entrepreneurship Session

So, I was invited by some awesome Microsoft Student Partners to speak about entrepreneurship during an event they organized called Microsoft Geeks Day. Being a Microsoft Geeks Day, I thought Bill Gates would be the best figure to discuss. The whole session was just a punch of videos with comments and discussions around them, that I believed conveyed the image better than a thousand words can.

Some of the videos I presented during my session are below, I guess you can figure out the whole content from the videos, Enjoy!

Bill Gates from Pirates of Silicon Valley
Bill Gates Negotiation Skills, makes a big difference from Pirates of Silicon Valley
It’s not about how big you start, but how big you THINK
You want Xerox to consider something called the Mouse
People skills from Pirates of Silicon Valley
[Nile TV] Public Speaking and Presentation Skills for Business Executives

[Nile TV] Public Speaking and Presentation Skills for Business Executives

viewers as we promised earlier at the beginning of the show that we are going to talk about the uh public speaking and how to develop our skills for public speaking for presentation that would be our topic for discussion now with our dear guest in the studio mr abdul madhi his public speaking coach good morning sir good morning good morning mr maggie first uh why are public speaking skills important for business executives no i think like every one of us would think that public speaking is a key skill for business executives and lots of other types of professions i think for lectures for entrepreneurs and especially for business executives what do you want to do in business is that you would like to leave a very positive impact they would like to gain people’s confidence in what you’re promising and what you’re like inspiring them to do so all that makes public speaking a very very important key skill for business leaders executives entrepreneurs and lots of other professionals how do you teach the entrepreneurs or the business people the employees these skills what are the steps needed in order to learn the basics for a good presentation for a good communication and uh public skills yeah thank you for asking that because that’s that’s the most frequent question that we get at carry toastmasters club which is a club for public speaking yep and most of the people who come for the first time they want to have like a cheat sheet for public speaking what do i have to do and the answer to that is that public speaking is a learned skill is that you have to like experience it so the best way to learn public speaking is to actually deliver speeches and there’s a lot of experiences that’s available in clubs like toastmasters for example where you can prepare speeches delivered get feedback and that’s how you learn public speaking of course there has to be outlines in things like preparing your speech your body language different other areas that you need to understand but by that it becomes about experiencing the delivery and getting feedback and accordingly getting better in your public speaking skills so a short answer probably you cannot teach public speaking you’re not going to learn public speaking by reading a book but you have to be out there speaking to the people and inspiring them getting feedback and learning from that how mr abdul how can we do that as it as a coach what are the most important tips that you give to your students or the people who are getting the course in order to do that you know because somehow um it’s um in certain people it’s been born in it’s in the character for others it’s not so how can we reach that yeah i think that usually goes on a case-by-case basis so it depends on the individual himself or herself but the key guidelines is and the key areas that people need to be ready with is self-confidence is that you have to people have to develop their own self-confidence through putting themselves out there to kind of be able to develop their skills so first is having the readiness to actually deliver the speech and sit in front of people and deliver the speech i think this is something that we’re often people who are need coaching is to be pushed slightly to start giving more speeches so one of the key areas is pushing people to to deliver more speeches and to also reach bigger audiences this is this is a key area and afterwards it comes into things like their body language you know like there’s a study that was uh being made um analyzing what affects people what are you speaking so if you’re watching me talking right now and you’re conceiving me um what is affecting the way that you’re conceiving the speaker and it turned out that 55 percent is about the way the uh the move their body their body language how they express themselves their facial expressions their hand movements and all that to 55 of the way people conceive you is about the way that you um move your body while talking and 38 is about the total voice to what extent you’re able to control your voice you kind of you can get on a high pitch or a lower pitch you can get fast or slow you can pause so all these affects the way people perceive you and only seven percent for the words so usually people worry a lot about what they are going to say but rather the impact is often created by the way they move their body the way they change their voice so accurately some of the key areas for people to learn is the way they move their body how do i move my body while speaking my fascial expressions my hand gestures and all that and also using the voice how do i alter my voice between a high pitch a lower pitch and all that so readiness pushing them practicing the body language getting more experience through delivering speeches and then working on their voice so what are the things that people should avoid while delivering a speech yeah i think there is a lot of common pitfall that people fall under once you do that the first is actually losing the audience at the first few seconds yes if you’re speaking the audience it’s very important to sit the frame is that if you kind of convey confidence and kind of articulate your your entry right i think that’s actually sets the frame for you for the rest yes of the speech to continue influencing them and keep them engaged and connected so one of the the biggest pitfalls is that people do not prepare an attractive entry or introduction to their speech and accordingly they lose audience for the through the rest of the speech um another area is structuring the speech itself giving thought to the structure of the speech of having an introduction a middle and conclusion an ending or a conclusion so um like thinking before you speak about the introduction the content of your speech and the conclusion is very important and also to be prepared another area is rehearsal is that if you’re giving an important speech for politicians for example they have to do lots of rehearsal before they’re important like talks and for example if you look at the presidential campaigns we have coaches traveling with them while delivering their speeches all over uh mr mcd we have to ask here because uh certain people do have a charismatic skills by nature when they start to talk you’re attracted to to what they are saying you are impressed other they are not they might be shy they might lose their audience for example because somehow they are redundant somehow the the way of talking is not attractive so how can i gain my audience that is what i’m saying but with uh how i’m saying uh the content yeah i think that’s very right i think charisma seems like something that people are born with but i would disagree slightly with this i think charisma is something that can be developed with practice so um the answer how do you practice that because to attract our audience it’s not somehow very easy a target here yeah i think when we analyze charisma and what charisma is about big part about charisma is about the way that i perceive myself which is about self-confidence understanding myself and understanding my limitations on my key areas of his strength so when people are pretty happy with themselves they become more charismatic because you can see through them through their energy how they are expressing themselves of interaction as well exactly so one way of looking at charisma is self-development and understanding yourself in order to become more charismatic once you understand yourself you have to look at what people are looking for so there is a key skill of cold reading is reading the audience understanding what the audience are expecting uh what inspires this kind of audience what this audience are looking for and accordingly i address them with the language with the uh thinking level that they would be um more ready to understand and and and commit with so what are the basic principles of communication and public speaking yeah if i would sit like basic principles it would be understand your audience you have to understand the audience you have to understand the environment in which that you’re delivering the speech you have to do preparations yes you have to research and especially if the topic is uh has some dense content you have to research you mean that anyone can deliver a speech in a good way and attract audience or uh only some people have uh this talent well some people do have more talent so they are talented by nature and some people can work in developing that so we would say that everyone can start developing their public speaking skills through finding the right environment to develop their speaking skills

ToastMasters Competent Communicator Award

I recently received the competent communicator award from ToastMasters International after finishing the first communication track CC which is a set of 10 speeches each focusing on a specific skills to develop:

1) Ice breaker                                    07.04.2009           breaks the Ice

2) The development way                    19.05.2009           organize your speech

3) Reaching Out 1                             23.06.2009           Get to the point

4) Reaching Out 2                             21.07.2009           How to say it

5) Reaching Out 3                             18.08.2009           your body speaks

6) Operation Badr                              06.10.2009           Vocal Variety

7) Classification of Ethics                   17.11.2009           Research your topic

8 ) Three years in business                 12.01.2010           Get comfortable with Visual Aids

9) Ambition to meaning                      02.02.2010           Persuade with power

10) Take the first step in faith             15.02.2010           Inspire your audience

ToastMasters CC

Serving as VP of Public Relations, Cairo ToastMasters Club

Since April 2010, I had been serving as VP of Public Relations at Cairo ToastMasters Club. The only ToastMasters Club in Cairo and during this period, I’ve utilized different social media channel to establish the image of the club and generate interest within this group to join ToastMasters while keeping members updated.

Today our ToastMasters Page I started on Facebook has 600 users and we have more than 180+ followers on Twitter, beside 8 videos produced from speeches within the club.

First time ToastMaster

Hello Everyone,

It was very interesting, being Cairo club ToastMaster for the first time last meeting, I had been a member since last March and delivered 4 speeches in the competent communicator track. I would like to utilize this opportunity to introduce my audience to ToastMasters, and encourage everyone to become a member or get involved in a similar activity.

ToastMaster is the leader of the session: introducing speakers, commenting on speeches and engaging attendees with the session while keeping track of the time.

You can check for more information about ToastMasters at the official website: http://www.toastmasters.com

ToastMasters cairo club: http://www.cairotoastmasters.com

Best of luck 🙂

– Abdo

Sharing Link: https://www.abdomagdy.com/sqmwx7