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! :)

:)