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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