What a lively and energetic meeting we all experienced on Monday. Again I was really pleased to be presiding over such a group of talented people. I do hope you gained as much as I did from the experience and I hope the club goes from strength to strength. Even though the numbers were low, the energy in the room certainly made up for it. There seemed to be much laughter, thought provoking ideas shared and a lovely cake kindly provided by Katy. From the speakers we came away with this idea. Design your life by being a superhero and by using the flower of success technique. How amazing is that. Also it made me realise that Toastmasters is a sales organization. It is selling the members a better version of themselves. That certainly is food for thought.
The evening started well with Paul D, our Sergeant at Arms setting up the room well. Paul also stepped in and did the warm up at short notice. When you have been a Toastmaster for a while, it does help you to be more proactive and help out where you are needed. Paul was a shining example of this. Some of the newer members should note that Paul also held his position on stage until the next person came to the stage and shook his hand to relieve him of his duties of being on stage. This is a very courteous skill and one we all should adhere to when conducting our meetings. It not only shows respect for the previous speaker on stage, but gives a definite hand over of roles from one member to another. Paul did this very well on Monday evening.
We then had our very experienced Toastmaster Amanda, who did another amazing job of keeping the laughter going, the energy up and the evening flowing. Amanda even came up with a new word. Feedbackers. Let’s all become great feedbackers to happify the world. Epsom speakers even extends your vocabulary to words that don’t even exist. How about that!!!!!
The three speakers all gave us excellent performances and much was learnt by all. Justin made design sound interesting, Dave Lane spoke about superpowers within you and Dave Goodman spoke about his technique of the flower of success. Dave Goodman won the best speakers award with his wonderful presentation.
We had three astute evaluations by three very experienced Toastmasters, which were Penny, Aishe and Costa. We can learn much from how people evaluate differently, and it is a very important part of the learning curve at Toastmasters. To work on your evaluation skills, definitely helps you become a better all round speaker. Costa went onto to win the best evaluation award.
We went onto the topics session and had Katy performing the role for the first time. Katy ran the topics like an award ceremony. The session was innovative and lively and I feel everyone had something to say. Elizabeth shone out like a star again by mentioning Scottish dancing on a completely unrelated topic. Amazing. So the topics ran like this. Costa won the award for the biggest bottom. Sheena was the biggest suck up. Zahir won the award for constantly repeating himself. Bobby won the award for most likely stealing the biscuits. Elizabeth won the award for unwanted advice. Phoebus won the award for forgetting where you are, and Paul D won the award for gaining the most parking tickets at Bourne Hall. Paul D won the session with a great topic. Everybody did really well though. There are fact sheets available for you to prepare for table topics, so make sure you have a read of this information, as it prepares you for these types of sessions. It will help you to enjoy them rather than fear them.
David Villa Clarke did an amazing topic evaluation session, where he managed to give everyone a commendation and recommendation, make us laugh and entertain us while educating us all the same time. David was obviously paying attention to the speeches earlier as he was showing us his superhero abilities.
Paul Hickson ended the evening with his general evaluation. It is great to see Paul back at the club more regularly as we have missed his wit and observations. It was a great evaluation on a wonderful evening. I will certainly take note of what Paul recommended to me, which is to stop Pee ‘ing on stage. We look forward to seeing you at the next meeting which is a special workshop hosted by Penny and Amanda on 21st August. I am sure the learning curve will be high again. Make sure you have fun until then.
Peter. 🙂
El Presidente.