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 😊