A cozy night for speeches

Despite the small venue, the night brought a warm atmosphere. Steve started the evening on time by acknowledging the guests and announcing that there were no changes to the meeting. Kate brought up her team for the evening, namely Kate herself as General Evaluator, Layeequlla as Grammarian with his word of the evening (and a grand prize bribe of a block of chocolate!!!) and last but not least Heather and Christine keeping us all sharply rolling according to the agenda timeline.

The first thing on the agenda was Table Topics. Ran by Graeme (a very experienced member), he utilized the concept of "faking it till you make it" with an argument acting challenge, in which members were given a scenario and were left in front of the audience to "hash it out". For instance, Rob found a wallet full of 50's, to which the dispute came from Jane as to whether she was the owner. The arguments about clothes, missing legs, and no teeth really helped set the atmosphere and made everyone want to participate. Craig and Peter rounded up the evaluation with a lot of well-deserved commendations.

Delan - Speeding along and cop Amy pulled him over

Rob - Doing his due diligence on Jane wanting her money back

Our first speaker for the evening was Paul. Introduced by James, he had great background information on Paul and really set the platform for him. Paul's speech was a very persuasive speech about how he helps support melanoma by going on a holiday with Ski New Zealand once a year. He was clearly passionate about the cause, with several shirts and hand-outs that were collected from his trips being made on available for the audience. A minor let-down was Paul was stopped a few times to address the distraction created by the audience. All and all, Paul made everyone want to go on holiday while supporting a genuinely great cause. Well done Paul!

James gave Paul great commendations and accurate recommendations that were clear and easy for the audience to understand.

Next speaker was Rob, who did a technical speech titled "I'm Sorry". Introduced by Amy, she was really encouraging and made us excited at what Rob had to offer for us and did not disappoint our expectation of a fantastic evaluator. Rob gave us insight into how the company he works for went from using a wideband radio to having to use a narrowband radio as per government changes. Rob enabled us to understand how he dealt with issues using great innovation and a combination of techniques and the impact it had to his business, and staff (which was as simple as literally pressing a button!!). Rob set a precedence for people to feel more at ease about doing technical speeches in the future. A really great effort from a very new member.

Amy later gave Rob a very positive evaluation. She congratulated Rob on a great speech and it was well deserved too! Much like James, Amy had great commendations and accurate recommendations for Rob e.g. using visual objects to enhance audience understanding; overall, it was a risk well worth taking speech.

After the speeches, Ian gave a presentation on the upcoming humorous competition (occurring on the 28th of August). Ian gave us a great overview of the competition itself and distributed a copy of the marking schedule for the benefit of our new members.

As per usual Craig ran a very official business session. A HUGE thanks to our amazing president for allowing us to remain informed and updated so that we can support our club of amazing, talented people. During the business session, Amy was also presented her Best Evaluator Award as she was not present at the awards night held at Off The Track. A big congratulations!

Amy - The Best Evaluator Award awardee

Being the general evaluator, Kate wrapped up the evening with her summary of the proceedings assisted by Layeequlla, Heather, and Christine. Layeequlla gave us his overview of the words and phrases that he liked (including Rob's long word that he didn't understand) Heather then came up and gave us her report of the meeting keeping us within the allotted two hours.

Overall a fantastic meeting for our last night at the Taradale town closet . . . I mean hall? Next meeting in two weeks will be back at our good o’ Greenmeadows Community Hall.

Awards of the evening:

• Best Speaker - Rob
• Best Evaluator - Amy
• Best Table Topics Speakers - Kate and James