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Tuesday 20 June 2017

Excalibur Past Presidents Meeting 14th June 2017

Our resident Lawyer and SAA for the evening, Simon Cooper, called our Excalibur Presidents Meeting to order and introduced our esteemed current President, Lynne Cantor who set the energetic tone for the evening.  Lynne asked what would we say to a 19 year old Excalibur as we celebrated our 19th birthday with cake! Googled responses included:

1.      Speak less, listen more - the key to a good Evaluator
2.      Be yourself - those who matter will love you, and those that don’t, don’t matter!
3.      Quality reigns over quantity– and quality is what we have focused on all year


Celebrating 19 years of Excalibur


Ten of our Past Presidents were present for the evening;-  Bob Nisbet DTM (2002-3), Rod Sloane (2004-5), Bob Ferguson (2005-6), Simon Bucknall (2008-9), David Adams (2010-11), Carol West DTM (2011-12), Simon Cooper (2012-13), Andrew Bennett DTM (2013-14) who joined us by Skype!, Cat Kipling (2014-15), Immediate Past President Freddie Daniells (2015-16), plus Current President Lynne Cantor (2016-17).  Additionally we welcomed two very notable committee members David West and David Sellman.


From L to R:- David Adams, David West, Simon Bucknall, Andrew Bennett (on screen), Rod Sloane, Bob Ferguson, Carol West, Bob Nisbet, Lynne Cantor, Simon Cooper, Cat Kipling, David Sellman. 

Our 6 guests, including our President’s other half to find out what Lynne had been up to all year!, were warmly welcomed along with our newest member, Ian Brown.

Incoming Area Director Cat Kipling was our superb Toastmaster of the evening seamlessly moving between the different segments and expertly and knowledgeably introducing each speaker.
                                     
Bob Ferguson hosted the ‘Excalibur Shopping Channel’ Table Topics session where speakers were encouraged to persuasively sell us the benefits of different products. Carol West persuaded us to buy Robo-Mow, Guest Tadija Popovic sold us the Belty Automatic Belt, David Sellman sold us the Massage Me Vest, and Rob Sloane sold us an Ice Cream Lock winning the Best Table Topic in the process!

                                   Rod Sloane - Best Table Topic

Bob Ferguson, who during his Presidents reign introduced Instant Evaluations to stop Table Topics overrunning! We all love him for that!! He encouraged David Lennon, Janet Tarasofsky, Ian Brown and David Adams to focus not just on performance skills recommendations, but to also share a tip on how to improve, and to highlight good sales techniques in their feedback.

Our first prepared speaker was Freddie Daniells, speaking from The Humorously Speaking manual #5 The Humorous Speech “My Financial Bailout”, about his time as a Stockbroker when he got arrested in Jersey by 17 policemen …..he claims he had only had one drink!  Yeah right! President Elect Katja van Koten gave a structured evaluation.

Our second speaker was District 91 Speech Contest Winner Simon Bucknall, giving us his second speech for the World Championships in Vancouver “Twelve Sophomores & An Englishman” which led him to be Best Speaker of the evening.   David West was his thoughtful evaluator.

                                  Simon Bucknall - Best Speaker 

Lynne Cantor, our final speaker,  fed back the results on her year long High Performance Leadership (HPL) Programme “Excalibur, A Club of Excellence” with specific examples and anecdotes around our members!  Concluding that we are a bigger, stronger more focused club. 

By delivering this speech Lynne completed her HPL and her Advanced Leadership Silver and, having previously completed her Advanced Communicator Gold, has achieved the accolade of Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM).  She also achieves a Triple Crown by completing three awards in one year – congratulations Lynne! 

Cat Kipling Congratulating Lynne Cantor on her DTM and Triple Crown

Andrew Bennett, beamed in via Skype, was Lynne's expert evaluator and won Best Evaluator with his defined criteria of how he was going to evaluate and demonstrated with specific examples.

                     Andrew Bennett, on Skype, winning Best Evaluator

Prepared Suzi Fish facilitated the Open Feedback session for the speeches, expertly managing the commendations and recommendations from the audience and always ending on a positive note.  

Monika Swiderska ably and succinctly kept us to time.

The general evaluation was expertly delivered by Bob Nisbet, who evaluated how the meeting was run as a whole according to a club’s mission statement, rather than just those who hadn’t been evaluated.  And his verdict?  “Bl__dy great!” J  And as the Incoming President for his own club, he’ll be pinching some of our ideas!

Lynne Cantor, DTM!,  thanked all the Past Presidents and hoped to see them again next year. Special thanks to Cat Kipling for not only being Toastmaster but for organising this event for the 2nd year running!  

AND we finished the meeting to time ..........for the first time in Excalibur’s history surely?!!  And here’s the proof…..!!  



Dates not to be missed!

Our next and final meeting of the current year will be on Wednesday 28th June, 6:45 for 7pm prompt start at The Fitzrovia Community Centre, 2 Foley Street, W1W 6DL. 

To celebrate the end of our year we will have bubbly and nibbles!  Do wear a hat, to celebrate our Incoming President’s love of headgear!

To make our VPE’s job easier, kindly confirm your attendance on Easyspeak or via excaliburspeakers@gmail.com. Thank you.

Don’t forget to book your ticker for “The Road to Vancouver” on Saturday 15th July where you will have the chance to hear four European District Champions practice their Semi-Final Speeches before they head to the World Championships in Vancouver. 

Members from other clubs who have completed at least seven speeches are welcome to experience Excalibur at any time and we are always seeking guest GEs.  Contact us at excaliburspeakers@gmail.com.


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