Great Expectations!

Kia Ora Napier Toastmasters,

Many thanks to everyone who attended our meeting last night and helped to ensure an enlightening and entertaining night for all. Peter chaired a great meeting with much laughter and I thought it was a thoroughly enjoyable gathering. Good to have guest Alistair from Bay City along again also.

Graeme chaired our 2012 Evaluation Contest and I felt he did a superb job. There is quite a lot to organise when you're the contest chair!

Evaluation Contest - Contestants

Many thanks to Laurence Bacchus, our test speaker from Pania (previously a Napier member) who presented a wonderful test speech titled 'Great Expectations'. From an evaluator's point of view I was struggling to find recommendations - well done Laurence! It was great to have you back again. Thank you so much for those members who agreed to judge, I really appreciated that.
Awards went to: 1st place Craig Robinson, 2nd place Sarah Hall, 3rd place Peter Manson.

Craig Robinson (right)

We wish Craig all the very best when he represents Napier Club at the Area B4 Evaluation Contest in Gisborne this Saturday. Gisborne is previously Craig's 'turf' so although I am not one ioto sporty, I am hoping for a 'home-town advantage' Craig! There will be a good number of our members travelling up to Gisborne on Saturday for the contest.
A special mention must be made to one of our newest members, James Ward, who took part in the Evaluation Contest having never given a TM evaluation before! I think James well deserves the 'Ambitious Award' for the night! And what a great job he did too.

Adrienne was our General Evaluator for the night and I felt she gave a thorough and insightful General Evaluation. I'm sure the evaluators would have picked up some useful pointers. She was very ably assisted by Timekeepers Jan and Graeme. James K was the grammarian and we were all encouraged to use drug names throughout the evening. In fact, I was going to title this report 'From Vitamins To Viagra' but then I thought better of it!! A novel concept James, well done.

Ian presented one of the best Table Topics sessions I felt we've had in quite a while. Based on a theme 'Ian's weekend' the four speakers were all very enthusiastic and verbose in their responses and we know that that is a sign of a well-matched topic! Great job Ian. Steve gave a very thorough Table Topics Evaluation in which our GE commented 'Steve treated every table topics speech as if it were a 5-7 minute speech' - high praise and well deserved.

Sheryl presented our first speech of the evening with 'The Apple's Got It All', an informative and enlightening account of the benefits of eating apples. Original concept Sheryl and a fantastic speech, very ably evaluated by Craig. Chris followed up with his speech 'Living In The Now', a persuasive and inspirational presentation based on the awareness that we have two sides of our brain and we need to use them both! Once again very well evaluated by Emily.

Colin ran a well-structured business session.

Best Table Topics: Rob Whaitiri
Best Contribution of the Night: Graeme Valentine

Look forward to seeing you all at our next meeting on Monday 26 March, 7pm at the Greenmeadows Community Centre, Tait Drive, Greenmeadows.

Sarah Hall
VPEd, Napier TM Club