Exquisite Night

Hello fellow Toastmasters

Thank you to all those members who attended and contributed to Monday evening’s meeting.  It was certainly a casual, light hearted and lively night.

The Toastmaster for the night was Sheryl, who steered the proceedings for the evening.  Starting on time, the Mission Statement was read by Netta and apologies were read and accepted.

Paul McPherson introduced his role as General Evaluator as well as his team. Bryce did an “exquisite” job of Grammarian, tallying the um’s and ah’s and noting the use of “exquisite” and colourful language.  James Kan kept track of time and did not end up using his “secret weapon”, the bell.

Sarah Lee kicked off a fun and lively start with the Table Topic session.  Sarah produced items of clothing – speakers needed to explain why their item was their favourite piece of clothing. 

• James Ward was first up, confidently demonstrating how a lovely green caftan with pink flowers could be worn as a scarf but then decided it was more a “man dress”.
• Graeme had a delicate pink hat to show off, with its pink fur, pearls and flowers.
• Sarah Hall looked exquisite in a big red floppy hat that hindered eye contact.  However it was grand enough to make a statement at the Melbourne Cup, where she was joined by James, wearing his green Caftan, as well as Graeme in his delightful pink hat.
• James Kan was a bit bewildered by his red floral Hawaiian shirt that he purchased off Trade me as a fundraiser for Cure Kids Charity.
• Netta made good use of humour with her black feather boa that she wore to Art Deco to do the Charleston, but discovered it was actually her black pet chicken called Sooty.
• Sheryl showed off a World Wide Wrestling belt that her wrestling obsessed son adored.

A different and entertaining start to the night, not too easy nor was it too hard.  It certainly engaged a lot of audience interaction - well done Sarah Lee.

Table Topics were ably evaluated by Danny Mills and James Ward giving ample commendations, with a theme to the recommendations of embracing, working with and getting excited about using props.

We were treated to three fantastic speakers.

Amy Edwards presented her Ice Breaker speech in a unique format of a news broadcast.  Dramatically and enthusiastically spoken she caught the attention of the audience with her introductory speech to the club.   Congratulations Amy on using such an original and effective concept.

David Grant was “Talking to the Point” on one of his favourite topics – Debating.  Concerned that debating was becoming a lost skill, David was out to inspire the audience that we could take a greater lead and use a debating format as a mechanism for the next level of communication for Toastmasters.

Chris Heath explained that “BYOD” was an acronym for the issue of “Bring Your Own Device” into schools.  Chris stepped the audience through how the technology used for learning had changed in schools over the years, from the slate board, to pencils to pocket calculators to the current i-pad.

Speakers were evaluated by Sarah Hall, Graeme Valentine and Jan Alve respectively.  The commendations were sincere and the recommendations were helpful, valuable feedback that will no doubt aide speakers in their next speaking projects.

The business session was run by Sheryl, in Craig’s absence.

• A reminder was given of Napier Club’s visit to Hastings Toastmasters was this Thursday – the 15^th November.  The start time is 7:30 pm at Wesley Lounge, opposite the Opera House, in Hastings.
• Netta was welcomed as a new member and was presented with her new member pack.
• A reminder that the next executive meeting was to be held at Craig and Jan’s on the 19^th of November at7:30.
• Graeme showed off his “cow” bag and provided a summary of the Conference in Hamilton on the 9^th, 10^th and 11^th November.
• A new stop watch was presented to the club for achieving the goals of 8 new members in the year to 30^th June 2012.

Paul rounded off the evening with his General Evaluation, providing a summary of the evening’s highlights and feedback to our Evaluators of the night.

Awards for the evening were presented as follows:

Best Table Topics: Sarah Hall

Best Speaker:  Amy Edwards
Best Evaluation: Graeme Valentine
Best Contribution: Sarah Lee

Well done to all another successful and enjoyable evening, with only two more to go before Father Christmas!

Sheryl

VP Ed.