Toastmasters: My Icebreaker Speech
The layout of my speech
- Hook
- Opening
- Background
- Activities
- Where I am now
Hook
Fellow Toastmasters, have you ever had your name used in all sorts of ways?
Opening
My name is Sai Dilip Ponnaganti. I go by Sai. My name gets used a lot. In chemistry class, they used to call me “saianide” (cyanide). Hey Sai! What's your shoe saize? Who is that Korean artist who is famous for Gangnam style — his name is also pronounced as “Sai” (Psy). And the old but golden expression of “saighh” (sigh). Uuggghhh
Background
I am a cloud engineer. I work in the cloud. Not quite literally in the cloud but since I'm lazy to explain the concept of cloud computing — I just say I work in IT since it encompasses everything.
Activities
I’m a sai of all trades and master of none. It's hard for me to say no, so I end up doing a lot of things. I write, play video games, play tennis, go to the gym every day, fly drones, love taking pictures, cook sometimes, and dabble in a lot of techie gadgets.
One of the things that I am pretty proud of was starting a podcast with a friend. It taught me a lot of things, if I can say one thing it would be asking the right questions. The genuine curiosity to learn from people's experiences is an invaluable trait that I have learned.
Where I am now
There are a lot of important phases in our lives. I can say this is one of the most meaningful ones I am going through right now.
Especially from the start of covid. I moved back with my parents as the majority of every other millennial and gen Z. It brought me closer to family than my entire life.
These last two years have been about healing and self-discovery through therapy, going beyond my mental and physical limits, and most importantly trying to work harder on myself than I do at my job.
— — — —
Feedback Received
- Clear
- Projecting well
- Good volume
- Confident
- Relaxed
- Not Nervous
- Ejected a lot of humor
- Members where attentive
- Has voice variation — develop more later on
Improvements
- Could have been a longer
- Do more hand gestures
- Could have included pictures or videos
- Look at the camera, as if you are looking at the audience
