Mike Thompson opened the meeting looking relaxed and tanned
having just come back from holiday.
(Jealous….us!) He handed over to our President Lynne Cantor who reminded
us all of the great ‘Competition Speaking’ workshop we had last week presented by
Bob Ferguson and Simon Bucknall. She linked
three of the workshop tips; Keep a Log Book, Preparation and have a Strategy, to
Speaking, Holidays and Tax Forms. (Have you done yours yet!).
We had another healthy turnout of members plus 6 guests from; Society, Kings, Berkeley Square, ex- Holborn Speakers and our twice yearly
visitor, Arnold Mannering who is Sue’s dad!
Lynne delighted in welcoming Mustapha Hanafi our newest
member to the club. That’s four new
members in just a few months which also gives us another DCP point. We are still on track to achieve Select
Distinguished by the end of the year.
One energetic leader, Lynne, introduced another energetic
leader, Giovanna Vasaturo, our smiling, bouncing, happy Toastmaster for the
evening. She claims she gets lost even
with her sat nav but she drove a great meeting last night. No stalling,
crashing or wrong turns were noted. She started off with calling up Brian Skelton our
kind and generous Timekeeper who was also kind and generous with time.
Odile Facil, our
lovely French member, hosted Table Topics (TT).
Four speakers on different aspects of being British from the weather
(David West) to drinking tea (Sue
Mannering) , English humour (Monika Swiderska) and a typical English life
(Mustapha Hanafi). The four evaluators
were Mike Thompson, Carol West, Brian Skelton, Irene Bradshaw. Odile introduced an extra vote for best TT
Evaluator.
David West won best TT with the weather as a subject of avoidance, to avoid talking about anything else!
Irene Bradshaw won best Evaluator with her recommendation on connection.
Our two Speakers were Cat Kipling and Paul Andreas. Cat spoke from the Entertaining Speaker
Manual, Project 3 – Make them laugh with a speech title ‘ “What cheese?” and
other stories’ on the subject of her husbands’ initial attempts at cooking, he is
now a great cook we understand.
Paul spoke from the Speciality Speeches manual, Project 2 –
Uplift the Spirit with a speech title ‘A Future and a hope’. A very powerful, moving and uplifting speech
covering 3 stories on Drink, Dalit and Desmond.
Katja Van Koten evaluated Cat is her usual efficient style
and Lynne Cantor evaluated Paul and didn’t stop complaining that she only had 3
minutes to write her evaluation….get over it!!!
Monika Swiderska facilitated our Open Feedback session
contributing both Commendations and Recommendations as appropriate. With just two speakers to evaluate there was
time to do a quick CRC on each evaluator.
And there was more……….this week Freddie Daniells ran a ‘Moments
of Truth’ (MOT) session from the Success
Club series as part of his Advanced Communication Silver (ACS). The MOT is just that, an mot on the health of
the club. We split into 3 groups with the
guests looking at ‘First Impressions’, and the member groups focused on
Membership Orientation and Membership Strength. The whole group did a shorter review on
Communication, Program Planning and Achievement Recognition. The feedback will be reviewed at the next
Committee meeting in February.
Lynne closed the meeting reminding everyone of the Club Contest
on the 22nd February, we have just a couple of Evaluator slots to fill, and asking members to consider taking on a
committee role for next year. Every club
needs a new President come July!
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