Welcome Napier Toastmasters, guests and all interested readers,
Our first formal meeting for 2012 kicked off with aplomb last night. It was fantastic to see a room full of people attend, with a number of guests present. A warm welcome to James and Joost attending for the first time, great to have you both along. I always smile when I see a queue of people lined up at the end of the meeting to sign up with our VP Membership Craig - we know it's been a successful night! Here's to an exciting year of fun, growth and development for all members.
Our Toastmaster for the evening, Chris Heath, led an extremely well run meeting. There were many changes in speakers leading up to the meeting, and Chris did a lot of work behind the scenes over the past fortnight to ensure that last night's meeting went off without a hitch. Thanks Chris!
Our Grammarian Ching-Hui introduced her word for the night, 'Revolution', and both revolution and revolutionary were used well throughout the evening. Christine and Jan did an excellent job of timekeeping, always a very busy and demanding role.
David led a great session of Table Topics, with a 'Summer' theme. I felt the topics were well written and chosen for individual participants, not too difficult and all members seemed to speak easily to them. Great to see a number of guests and newer members take part! Graeme gave a very thorough and useful Table Topics evaluation, never an easy role when you are undertaking this by yourself. I'm sure the members would have found some useful pointers to improve their table topics speeches next time.
What an eclectic and interesting set of speeches we were treated to! Peter presented 'A Better World', a powerful emotive speech encouraging us all to let our children live a little and to learn from experience. I particularly liked Peter's gripping opening. Rob followed with an excellent Icebreaker speech 'This Is My Life' where we learnt a bit more about him and his life journey that has brought him along to TM. Well done Rob! We all look forward to learning more about you in future speeches! From Icebreaker speeches to speeches by DTM's, Emily followed with an educational and informative speech 'Wind Lion Gods' that had us all intrigued. Two Masters Degrees Emily - that's impressive! Do you think you could share them around? :)
Last night's 3 evaluators, Colin, Steve and Sheryl respectively, presented some very useful and informative evaluations and I'm sure all speakers received valuable recommendations for future speeches. To all members, when you come around to writing your next speech, I encourage you to review previous evaluations to see if you are addressing the recommendations you have already been given. This is the fastest way to grow!
President Colin led a well run Business Session. Craig presented an excellent General Evaluator's report as usual, very thorough and with some pertinent recommendations for all.
Sarah presented an Educational on the International Speech Contest which is coming up at our next meeting. Early indications show a great number of keen participants, I encourage you to get writing over the next fortnight! Remember that trip to America could be your prize!!
Awards for the evening:
Best Table Topics: Chess Severyn-Parrish
Best Speaker: Emily Murray
Best Evaluator: Sheryl Mackie
Best Contribution of the Night: Ian Wright for this IT skills and willingness to always help out in this area.
Look forward to seeing you all at the next meeting on Monday 27 February, 7pm, Tait Drive, Greenmeadows Community Centre.
Sarah Hall
VPEd
Napier TM
Was very sorry to hear that Ching-Hui is leaving us, though excited about her opportunity to learn Te Reo. Good luck to her and I look forward to her coming back next year!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to see Ching-Hui go too. I made sure I gave her a hug before she could leave. I'd like to say, how very impressed I was with the high caliber of speeches last night. I was particularly impressed with how well, honestly and earnestly Rob spoke. Well done and kudos to you. I thought that each speech was presented well and genuinely felt that each one was highly interesting.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I listened to each person speak, I have the habit of observing people in the audience to see what their reactions are. Let me tell you... that people were leaning forward and paying attention to the speakers. That's a great testament of how well everyone spoke.
I thought it was good start to the year. All the speakers, Robert, Peter and Emily were interesting. Ching Hui gave us a warm farewell speech and I thank her for her contributions over the past few years. She has grown in confidence and told us many interesting stories.
ReplyDeleteDavid Grant
A really tremendous way to start the New Year, with a interesting and highly entertaining evening and THREE new members signed up, with another (at least) due next meeting.Anybody interested in joining, now is the time to make that step as you can enjoy, learn and progress with our 4 fresh faces!
ReplyDeleteWe are very sorry to see Ching-hui go, she has progressed a great deal over her all to short time with us, we wish her well with her 'new' language.
Also sorry to hear that Millie is not returning after the Christmas break, we will miss her dramatic presentations, however the quiet word is that Jill (Millie's mum) is going to take over and we would love to see her join our happy band!
Excellent summary of the meeting Sarah, well done!
Craig
Great meeting summary thanks Sarah.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely was another great night out and just as rewarding as ever. I feel that all three evaluators did a very good job. This is the perfect place to learn how to present one's case and ensure that the message gets through. Today I was presenting briefly to a field day of over 100 farmers and had enough recent speaking experience to do a good job. A big part of that 'success' is due to the effort that evaluators put into their job. So, many thanks Colin and everyone else who evaluates for that matter!