ESC Meeting Monday 4th February 2018
We had another lively meeting on Monday 4th. Mark Peacock was our Toastmaster for the evening and did a brilliant job, in charge of the proceedings. First of all we had a piece of club business – the election of our new job-sharing Sergeant at Arms, John Drinkwater. John has stepped up to help the club, and was elected unopposed. (Proposed by Costa Nicolaou, Seconded by Dave Goodman). It is wonderful to welcome John onto the committee and he gave an impressive performance tonight in his very first outing, making us all feel very much at home.
Matt Tuff was our timekeeper for the evening, Costa our ballot counter and John doubled roles as videographer.
Elizabeth Bennett was our warm-up artist, with the theme ‘Shocks and Surprises’, which led to some dramatic and heart-warming disclosures from attendees.
Zane Vaisla gave us her speech ‘Nearly Dead’ – an interesting account of the rise, and fall, but then the rise again (in a slightly different form) of electronics giant Nokia. This was definitely food for thought. Paul van der Hagen followed with a well-researched story following the French ‘Yellow Vest’ (Maillot Jaune) protest movement. I had often wondered how and why the movement arose – here was the answer!
Phoebus Apostolidis followed with his C10 speech, extolling the need to gain confidence – a magnificent conclusion to his Competent Communicator Award, and a very clear demonstration of how far Phoebus has come since his early days in the club. It is great to see how much confidence Phoebus himself has gained in his time at Epsom Speakers!
Dave Goodman evaluated Zane’s speech, I evaluated Paul’s and Penny Williams evaluated Phoebus’ C10 – all aiming to show the club exactly what was great about the speeches, and also one or two ways that each could be improved.
After the break, Matthijs Houweling was our Topics Master, leading members and guests in impromptu speaking – as usual a challenge for each speaker but a hugely enjoyable session.
Julia Belling was Topics Evaluator, rising gamely to the challenge of finding a commendation and recommendation for each speaker, as well as the Topics Master himself.
Finally, Charlie Warshawski shared with us his valuable experience as the General Evaluator for the evening, looking at everything that had not yet been evaluated, giving us all hints and tips to improve future meetings.
Winners were:
Best speaker: Phoebus Apostolidis
Best Evaluator: Penny Williams
Best Topic: joint winners (new member) Philip Smale and (guest) Joe.
Our Annual Club International Speech and Evaluation Contests will be held on Monday 18th March. All members are eligible to enter the Evaluation Contest, all who have achieved C6 or Level 2 in Pathways can enter the International Speech Contest. Please contact me, to enter!
The next club meeting will be on Monday 18th February, when Penny Williams will be our Toastmaster – I look forward to seeing you all there!
Gillian Prior,
President