Meeting Report 9th August

Our meeting on 9th of August was a bit on the fly! Or at least Freddie Daniells convinced us to that truth in his energetic introduction! He also helped us imagine the agendas that were stuck in the traffic with our President Katja van Koten, and therefore, slightly late.

Then, our SaA Brian Skelton explained the logistics and introduced the guests: Andrew, Dmitri and Branko.

Branko was visiting us for the second time, and this night he volunteered to help us by being a Timekeeper. And what a great job he did providing us with detailed, yet concise, reports of the timings.

The next part of the meeting was Table Topics run by Monika Swiderska. The theme was inspired by her not-so-lucky adventure, when her backpack was stolen a couple of days earlier. The first speaker was David West who was asked what would he do if his bag was stolen. However, David has an incident of his own as he fell on the slippery steps just before the meeting and he told us about that. Marcin Tolysz evaluated David and suggested that he could focus more on the story. Then we had Carol West telling us about one object she can’t live without. She explained us how she needs to monitor her insulin levels and that her medical monitoring device helps her with that. Carol was evaluated by Brian Skelton. Our third speaker was Lynne Cantor, who tried to convince the audience (a board of managers) that the missing laptop and missing data is not a big issue as everything was backed up in the cloud. Bob Fergusson commented that he loved how Lynne lead this table topic with dialogue. The next speaker was Tadija Popovic telling us that if he had had something stolen, he would probably drink vodka. Evaluation for Tadija came from our VPE Hannah Van Der Deijl. The fifth speaker was Cat Kipling who was asked about the form of punishment for the thief. Cat explained that he or she should rebuild the stolen laptop. She was evaluated by Ian Brown. The final table topics speaker was our guest Dmitri. Dmitri told us that we should not put all eggs in one basket if we want to avoid having all belongings stolen. The evaluation came from Chinkata Opara, who commended Dmitri on doing a table topic during his very first Toastmasters meeting.

The first speech was delivered by Ian Brown. It was a mesmerising story about Julius Caesar entitled “Roman Candle”. We learned a lot about Cesar’s life and re-lived the history. Ian brilliantly brought this story to life and completed project 5 from Storytelling manual.

Then, we took part in a workshop by Brian Skelton, who taught us how to make our party special by making fantastic and unusual fruit decorations. Master Chef Brian invited our President Katja to try making the decorations herself, which turned out to be less easy than we all thought!

The evaluation of the first speech was given by Bob Fergusson. Bob commended Ian for his changes of pace that helped to deliver a story, but suggested he should start with more action. After a very lively and powerful evaluation deliver by Bob, we listened to Chinkata Opara who commented on Brian’s speech. Chinkata said that the room was enthralled by this very interesting and unusual speech. Chinkata recommended that Brain could lifted the food up, so everyone could see it and perhaps explain more why certain things are so difficult to do.

Next, we had a fantastic and very insightful Open Feedback session led by our VPE Hannah Van Der Deijl. She not only facilitated it smoothly, but also provided a lot of observant and helpful comments herself.

The role of General Evaluator was filled by our Area Director Cat Kipling. She mentioned that it was her third Toastmasters meeting on the day, but she also highlighted that all the meetings were really good. Then, she evaluated all the roles of the evening.

Lastly, Hannah gave us a bit of an update on VPE housekeeping with the hint that she would like to explain her plans for this year in a speech.

Finally, it was handed over to Katja, who called Lynne to the stage to hand in the best table topic speaker award. And after that, we went to the pub 

Meeting Report 26th July

26th of July was yet another exciting meeting! It started with warm words from Katja van Koten, our President who then handed over to the Toastmaster Brian Skelton. The theme that Brian chose was very thought provoking as he asked a question what are we aspiring to this Toastmasters year...

Nick Westall was the Timekeeper and did a brilliant job measuring the times of table topics, speeches and evaluations.

The table topic session was prepared by our Immediate Past President Lynne Cantor. Her choice for the table topic session was to move away from direct questions and challenge us with themes. The speakers were presented with an object and tasked to describe it without using its name or words closely associated with it. The first one to try this innovative game was Suzi Fish who was talking about dental floss without actually using the phrases “dental floss” or “teeth”. She was evaluated by David West. The next speaker was Arnold Mannering talking about a “creature” and jumping on a stage as he was trying to portrait a rabbit! Arnold was evaluated by Simon Cooper. The 3rd speaker was Marc, a guest to our club. He spoke about wonderful Christmas time trying to link it with his key word “snowflake”. Carol West was asked to give comments on this table topic. Last but not least was our guest Lin who spoke about smart and athletic animals- dolphins. She was evaluated by Marcin Tolysz.

There were 3 prepared speeches that night.

The first speaker was Monika who presented her Master’s project. The speech was from Technical Presentations manual and was about 3D Environmental Impact Assessement. Monika tried to explain how 3D maps can help to communicate environmental data to the wider audience.

The next speaker was Freddie Daniells. In an amusing speech entitled “Below the belt” he told us about the complexities a gentleman faces in choosing the appropriate underwear for the right occasion. It was a 1st project from Humorously Speaking manual.

Then we heard from Chinkata Opara who told us a story about a man and his 3 wives. The story was about how the traditional way of living can clash with the modern ones. The moral was very thought-provoking and perfectly met the objectives of the project as it was project 3 The Moral of the Story.

In the evaluations part, Monika got a very detailed and insightful feedback from Cat Kipling. Cat mentioned that Monika understands the subject, but suggested that she should work on better structure and presentation to help convey the message.

The second evaluator Marc Lottig pointed that Freddie used slightly absurd observational humour and funny exaggerated stories that worked very well for this project. He recommended that Freddie should spend more time on preparation.

Chinkata was evaluated by Ian Brown. Ian commended Chinkata for his complete storytelling, humour and rich stream of narrative. As a recommendation, he mentioned that Chinakata could use more facial expressions.

Our usual Open Feedback session was led by Sue Mannering. Sue brilliantly gave the audience the opportunity to comment on the given speeches and for the speakers to benefit from the feedback of the wider audience!

General Evaluation was done by Sonia Araujo. She has summarised the performance of all roles that have not been yet evaluated giving them constructive feedback to allow their futher development.

Then, our President Katja handed out the awards:
Best Speaker: Chinkata Opara
Best Table Topic Speaker: Arnold Mannering
Best Evaluator: Marc Lottig

The last part of the meeting was a speech from Simon Cooper to celebrate Lynne’s DTM. Well done Lynne! :)

:)

Meeting Report 12th July

12th of July was the very first meeting with Katja van Koten as the President of Excalibur. She told us a story about her mum’s recent stroke to remind us how lucky we are to have our voice and how we should aspire to excellence in communication.

After this powerful introduction, our SaA Brian Skelton explained logistics of the venue and introduced guests.

The night was led by Marcin Tolysz who was Excalibur’s Toastmaster for the first time. He chose a word of the day “Why” which related to the theme of the meeting:: Why are we Toastmasters? The question was truly thought provoking! Well done, Marcin!

Our Timekeeper was Brian Skelton and his reason for joining Excalibur was to become a better speaker in order to deliver an amazing TED talk and help his other club Kings Speakers.

Table Topics were prepared by David Lennon and this time we spoke about the weather. What a British topic it was! The first table topics speaker was Hannah with one word to describe British weather, evaluated by Chinkata Opara. Then, we had Monika Swiderska who advised that if you are tired of the weather in your current place, you should move out. She was evaluated by Simon Cooper. David West spoke about the difference between accuracy and forecasting and was evaluated by our guest Jayanthiny Kangatharan. Then, we listened to Siergei who described how weather affected his mood and his evaluator was Freddie Daniells. We also heard from Suzi Fish who loves hot weather. Irene Bradshaw evaluated Suzi. Finally, Carol West told us why she likes wind and rain with some evaluation comments from Tony Winyard.

There were 2 prepared speeches that evening.

The first one was delivered by Tony Winyard who spoke about his amusing adventures as a DJ in Jakarta. This was a project from the Entertaining Speaker manual. The second speaker was our guest Jayanthiny. She ran a Panel Discussion with Freddie Daniells, Carol West and Irene Bradshaw in it. The questions she asked were about their professional lives and what they learned from their jobs.

Monika Swiderska evaluated Tony’s speech mentioning that his vivid vocabulary and images could be enhanced by more dialogues. Chinkata Opara evaluated Jayanthiny. He mentioned that she could improve the logistics (especially speaking with the Timekeeper in advance), but overall, she asked great questions.

Freddie Daniells run the Open Feedback session, which was full of insightful comments.

Finally, we received constructive comments on the meeting from Simon Cooper, who was General Evaluator.

Then, we enjoyed the rest of the evening in the pub 😊