Survival training in chairing and debating

I survived chairing my first meeting! It flowed smoother than I had expected and I rather enjoyed the role and its challenges. These are some highlights from last night’s meeting.

First time chairing a Toastmasters meeting: Joanna.

Manu delivering his third speech at U-CAN-SPEAK Toastmasters.

What a performance! William demonstrating excellent speaking skills in his Ice Breaker speech.

Girls vs boys: should reality TV be banned? It was a great challenge that chair Daniel had prepared for us.

Richard set us off on quixotic tone with his rather humourous approaches to his Grammarian role. For the rest of the meeting, I had to really, really, really restraint myself from over-using the word of the day.

Empathetic emphasis was Jono’s moment of glory during his speech evaluation. He drove home the message that he loved Manu’s wanderlust adventures in Thailand. Manu painted a detailed, quixotic and awesome picture of his time travelling through Thailand. I came away feeling as if I too had partaken in buckets of the travel-bug he was promoting.

Evaluating William’s Ice breaker speech was a first for Lindsey, but she shared a positive, thoughtful and glowing evaluation of William’s first speech. William’s speech took us on a philosophical journey through his football (aka soccer) influenced life, from puppy love, leadership to cultural awareness. What else can one ask for from a first speech. Well done, William.

We had a treat with our educational session which was on debating. The last time Daniel and I both debated, we were both 17! Team negative (Andy and Julius) took on Lindsey and I on whether reality TV should be banned. Poor fellows, we had so much ammunition from the current media frenzy on reality TV. The mock-debate ended on time and I hope we entertained through the colourful, passionate and heated arguments to persuade the audience to ban reality TV.

Ross led us through our extended Table Topics session (25 min) with challenges that no one saw coming. My personal favourite is to argue for how baked beans, spaghetti and asparagus can alleviate constipation problems. That was one session where my mind was completely boggled by the end of the session. Some topics could be viewed as faux pas in the wrong hands (how syphilis has been shown to increase with sex after midnight) but I thought all our participants handled their topics bravely and mustered all their mental energy towards producing a coherent argument in the end. Well done to all participants!

Lastly, kudos to the efficient Timm, who kept us on time throughout the meeting. I am sure we barely strayed far from the printed agenda.
To quote Timm, the meeting was “something special, unique [because] we had great speakers and superb content”.

Joanna