S@A Paul M, called us to order and handed the meeting over to Glen H as Chairman for the first half of the meeting, while John presented his Opening Comments and Guest welcome.
We had formal apologies from Philip, Juliet, Brett, Dai Fei, Paul V and Rino, but welcomed Mark as the evening’s Visitor.
Edmond read the Mission of the Club and Meghan presented the Word of the Day – Assimilation – in her first role as Grammarian.
As part of the round of Introductions, Glen H posed the question; What we do if we had won Masterchef, extracting yet another plethora of interesting responses.
VPE Kimberley had a fairly significant Agenda Update to manage while Natasha took on the role of the Leadership Manual Evaluations.
Kimberley was also the Toastmaster for the first session and introduced Katrina with her first Ice Breaker Speech. The observation of numerous ‘old hands’ within the Club is that these Ice Breakers are getting better all the time and Katrina’s excellent first speech was no exception. Katrina shared with us a potted history of her life and shared very courageously her sense of terror and getting up in front of groups to speak, while at the same time portraying an air of confidence and boldness.
Kimberley then dutifully introduced herself as the second speaker, presenting an excellent overview of the Toastmasters Leadership Roles and how a Club both functions better and provides the opportunity to members to build their own speaking and leadership skills by participating in the Toastmaster Leadership program. It was a very timely presentation at tis stage of our new Toastmaster year.
Katrina was very expertly Evaluated by Peter Crosby who brings such a depth of experience to Evaluation which is most valuable for a first time speaker. John who as President added his support to the excellent points that had been made in Kimberley’s speech critiqued Kimberley’s presentation.
After the Break S@A Paul reconvened us, while Glen H remained in the role of Chairman for the second half. Daniel proposed a highly appropriate and timely Toast to Nancy Wake (The White Mouse) following her passing in the previous week.
Natasha was Toastmaster for the second Speech Sessions and introduced Glenn D with his Speech #7 (Research Your Topic) with a very insightful speech entitled: “The Man who did not care about the colour of the Cat”. The subject of Glenn’s speech was Deng Xiaoping the former Premier of China and his economic reforms. You always learn something new at Toastmasters.
Glen was Evaluated very astutely by Chris.
Bernard was Table Topics Master and ran the segment very closely along competition lines in order to permit members to get a feel for competition conditions. 8 participants were escorted from the room and brought back in one at a time to… “Explain why they had crashed their friends Ferrari into their garage door”. The results were an extraordinary array oh hilarious responses, from insurance brokers to very benevolent friends and dysfunctional neighbours. At one point Glen H had us all in search of an oxygen mask from laughing so much. An excellent warm up for the competition.
Paul M (who was also a participant, along with John were the Evaluators lending lots of helpful hints in the lead up to the competition at the next meeting.
The rest of the evenings Evaluations were conducted very smoothly and proficiently by Paul M (again) with the ums and Ahs. Meghan with the Grammarian Report acknowledged a number of diligent members incorporating Assimilation into their speeches and comments.
Bernard undertook the task of Big Ears while Chris reported on his activity as Timer for the evening. John concluded the Evaluations with the General Evaluation providing an abridged observation of all those who had not been Evaluated during the course of the evening.
VPE Kimberley provided both information and encouragement to participants in the Competitions as well as future meetings with the Forward Planning Update and we received some very positive feedback from our Visitor Mark in Guest Comments.
John concluded the meeting by both offering his regrettable apologies for the Competition Night but encouraging all participants to give it a REAL go – and all non-participants to come along, form a highly valuable and receptive audience and willing assistance on the night.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Tuesday 23rd August – Club Humorous and Table Topics Competition 2011
Tuesday 6th September –
Area 6 Humorous and Table Topics Competition 2011 at Burwood Community Centre
Tuesday 13th September – Normal Meeting
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