Meeting Report 13th July 2016

Welcome to the new Toastmaster year.  After the decision to Brexit the country may be in a state of flux, but no need for Excalibur to be as we and Toastmasters are as strong as ever.  Our New President, Lynne Cantor, kicked off the meeting with a challenge to us all; to write down our goals and then share them, giving us a greater chance of actually achieving them.

….and here to kick us off….Lynne’s goal for this year, 2016/17, is to complete her HPL (High Performance Leadership) and at least one of her ACG (Advanced Communicator Gold) manuals. Here is Lynne clearly revelling in her new role! :)

The Timekeeper of the night was Tony Winyard who made everyone laugh by assigning the time of every speaker and evaluator to a notable event with the same winning time.  Novel and fun. 

Simon Cooper entertained us in TT (Table Topics) with a selection of objects and questions, with one or two risky additions!   With a bit of persuasion every one of the short evaluations had a recommendation.  The best TT Speaker was Daniel Broadhead winning with ‘A Beatles Album and why it was the best ever’.

David West was our competent and capable Toastmaster of the night.  He introduced two speakers at once as Cat Kipling and Lynne Cantor did a bit of a double act with two speeches from the Special Occasion Manual.  Cat ‘Presented an Award, The Presidency’ to Lynne and she ‘Accepted the Award with her inaugural speech’.  Cat’s speech flowed beautifully and did justice to the recipient.  Lynne’s speech was gracious, uplifting and inspiring taking us into the year ahead. 

The final speaker was Katja Van Koten doing the Keynote Address from the Professional Speaker series.  It was a very well grafted speech that was personal, touching and very moving, winning her the best Speaker of the night.

We had three excellent evaluations from George Chiesa, Giovanna Vasaturo and Irene Bradshaw.  All providing R’s (recommendations) and a tip on ‘how to improve’.   Winning the Award with her tips on ‘breathing’ was Irene. 

There were two open feedback sessions this week, one for the three Speakers, run by Daniel Broadhead, and one for the three evaluators, run by Freddie Daniells. This was well received and added a little variety to the standard meeting format.

It was a very positive and uplifting first meeting of the new Toastmaster year.  Do join us again on Wednesday 27^th July.  See you all there.