Tonight we had a great array of differences from our usual meeting.
Firstly we had 5 guests turn up (AJ, Anthony, Britteny, Chamar & Shaj) who were very friendly and would be great to see them along again. Together they comprised almost 30% of the attendance!!!
After the introductions we had Graeme open with an ice breaker game. Continue reading A Diverse End of Uni Year Meeting
What a great meeting we had this evening. We had three guests, Rachel and Scott who where here for their first time, and Anthony who had returned for his second meeting. All three bravely participated in Table Topics covering topics such as food, weather and music. Continue reading Graeme Moves Audience to Tears
Tonight, Timm filled the role of Toastmaster. He challenged everyone who would get up to speak to have a particular look at hand gestures – which is one of the objectives of CC project 5: “To be most effective, gestures should be made above your elbow and away from your body, and they should be vigorous and definite to show conviction and enthusiasm.” In fact, tonight’s speakers generally demonstrated excellent use of body language. Continue reading Say it with Gestures!
Dan gave a very sobering and moving speech on his experiences of being an army commander in Afghanistan and losing several soldiers on the battlefield a year ago, this month. Unfortunately, he was unable to bring in his army gear, but promised that he would do so on some other occasion.
By delivering this speech, Dan has now completed the first five speeches of the Competent Communication manual and was given an award by Timm to recognize this achievement. Well done, Dan! Continue reading Afghanistan and Japan: OE out of the Ordinary
A great open night, a big thank you to Akshay for organizing clubs day and our venue for the night.
Our Toastmaster for the evening, Graeme had three speakers giving prepared speeches. First was Cherry who is our newest member and gave her Ice Breaker speech. She talked about growing up and venturing beyond her comfort zone.
The second speaker was Rory. He was at the other end of the spectrum, in so far that he gave his tenth and final speech from the competent communicator manual, the initial manual at toastmasters. He talked about overcoming ones fears, and the help and determination required to succeed in doing just that.
The third and final formal speaker and special guest, the Assistant District Governor of Education and Training, spoke about the levels or barriers we need to overcome in our lives. These barriers are our own perception of where we are relative to others. In other words, we perceive that we do not measure up to others, where in reality we are all equal, the inequality is in our own minds.
Timm introduced the evenings Table Topics. Timm involved 5 of the evenings guests, Matt, Kamoe, Bruce, Paul and Amir.
In addition to the guests who spoke, we were also joined by Richard, Colette, Celeste and Tom. A big thank to those Toastmasters who invited guests along, and those who helped answer their questions.
We all look forward to seeing everyone for the next meeting, Monday 29th July. Remember we are back at KE4 in Kirkwood Village next week, and to check easy-Speak for an updated agenda! A copy of the highlights will be on our Facebook Page (U-CAN-SPEAKToastmasters) and Blog on Easy Speak.
The meeting went extremely well on Monday. We had a decent turn out despite it still being the holidays. Two guests were present, Sophie and Cherry who introduced themselves to everyone after Table Topics.
Speeches were done by Jono and Graeme. Jono gave an educational style talk about the weather, with an overview of how weather works on a global scale and how to understand how it’s represented on in TV. Graeme talked about his best friend, which turned out to be a bird and a humorous and heart
warming speech.
Table topics was conducted by Lynsey and evaluated by in a double method by Maddy and Timm who also both won the rubber chicken. The new two person evaluation method worked really well and I’m sure we’ll see it again.
I also performed a bard, reading from Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk To Freedom.
Overall another fun and brilliantly run evening at Toastmasters.
Rory
U-CAN-SPEAK 