Now I have joined Toastmasters - what do I do?

This was one of the interesting speeches presented at our meeting on 8th
November, particularly appropriate on the night as we had a couple of
guests!

Toastmaster of the night was Ros and as expected she did a great job of
running the meeting, starting and finishing on time with lots of
entertainment,laughter and good company in between.

Steve started the night of with Table Topics and had a varied and wide
range of topics given to the lucky speakers from Time Machines,
Holidays,Getting out of NZ,Bringing someone back from the grave,best
meal and what would you like to have been in life? All the speakers
spoke well to their respective topic and the Table Topics Evaluator
James gave them excellent feedback while deciding that Joyleen was the
winner of the "Best Table Topic" of the night award.

Our first prepared speech of the night was that mentioned in the heading
and was presented by long term member Ian, this was Educational and
entertaining and well presented in Ian's laid back but interesting
presentation style. He explained clearly the approach when you first
join the Club and the selection of a Pathway to follow, depending on
what it is that you are looking for from Toastmasters. He had  a handout
for the guests and newer members with much useful information to assist
them along the way. This speech was well evaluated by Greg, who as a
fairly new member said that he had learnt at lot from Ian's presentation
and had some excellent commendations for Ian, plus a couple of
suggestions where he believed the speech could have been improved. Well
done Greg!

Next up was another experienced member Jan, who was working from the
Visionary Communication Path and is on the last Level (5) for this
particular Path. Jan's speech,entitled "I have a small Dream!" was also
most appropriate on the night as she expounded the virtues of the very
interesting variety of speech objectives involved in the Pathways
program and in her case particularly Podcasting. Jan has an excellent
presentation style with use of a   good speaking rate,pauses,gestures
and extremely interesting material, Jan tells me she is due to present
an Education Session at our next National Conference in Taupo next
May,subject (that's right!) Podcasting. Her aim is to get as many people
locally involved is this exciting medium.Jan use a very effective method
of getting her message across, by stating a benefit of her assignment
and then asking the audience 'metaphorically' "what does that mean" and
then giving the answer.Graeme evaluated Jan's presentation that was par
excellent and difficult to find areas of improvement.

Our final speaker was Karen, who recently completed her Level Five in
Leadership Development (congratulations Karen on this marvelous
achievement) and was starting a new Path "Presentation Mastery" with an
Ice Breaker entitled "What's in a Name?" What an Ice Breaker it was!! we
heard all about Karen's early life in the UK and since moving to NZ and
her use of numerous props to get her message across was outstanding.
Extremely humorous and very professionally presented. This left her
Evaluator Tony very little to suggest how the speech could have been
improved but he did a grand job of commending Karen on many areas of her
presentation.

The Business Session and General Evaluator's session wound up the night
assisted by the Grammarian, Joyleen, with her word of the night
'vaccination or vax', which was used regularly and the Timekeepers,Steve
and Kerry, who gave us the speech times and kept us to time!

Best Speaker: Jan

Best Evaluator: Greg,

Best Table Topic: Joyleen

Best Contribution: Ian

Two new members joined on the night, Jessie (also a member at Pania
Club) and Denise and Ros finished of the evening telling us she would
see us again in two weeks on Monday 22nd November - WILL WE SEE YOU
THERE?? Everyone's welcome!