"DO YOU UNDERSTAND?, WE'ARE OFF"

These were two of the titles of speeches that we heard at Napier's meeting on 3rd April, held on the first Monday due to next week being Easter Monday. While the turnout of members was reasonably small it was an excellent meeting well run by Toastmaster Ros(standing in for Tony who was unwell) with three great speeches and a very interesting Table Topics session.

We had a visitor being the Area Director, Jacqui who also gave us an address which doubled as a Pathways assignment.

Tony had prepared the program and also the Table Topic subjects for the evening and it was a pity that he could not attend to see how successful the evening was.  With a rousing welcome from Sgt-at-arms, Graeme, we were underway with the Grammarian, Denise, having us use a super word (or two) 'super dooper' which morphed into supercalifragilisticexpealidocious on several occasions.

Our first prepared speech was from Jan, introduced by Ros (she was a busy lady during the night!).Jan was commencing a new path "Presentation Mastery" and this was an Ice Breaker for her. An excellent speech, extremely well presented as we come to expect from Jan, and very interesting about an upcoming holiday to an Island part of Raratonga.  Although untitled it had every thing that a great speech should have and we know that Jan is going to successful complete another Path over the coming year or two. Jan has in fact just received a "Triple Crown" award for completing three Levels of Pathways in a Toastmaster's year. Congratulations!

Next up was Steve with his body language assignment, introduced by Andy. What an excellent selection of subject for this particular assignment entitled "We'are Off" about heading away for a holiday, planning, packing, arrival at the airport etc, no doubt made some of us a little envious with all the holiday talk, particularly after Jan's speech as well! Steve certainly utilised many many body movements, gestures and interesting facts in his delivery and he did not forget his passport!!

Our third prepared assignment was presented by Jacqui, introduced by Song. Jacqui's speech was entitled "Do you Understand?" and led us through the response to this question and onto the achievement of members in Toastmasters, with excellent delivery, thought and commitment as the Area Director presenting an uplifting address to the Club.

Following on we had a very interesting Table Topics session (impromptu speaking) with subjects prepared by Tony and delivered by Ros. Everyone had a chance to speak and most did well, certainly all were able to speak over the minimum 1` minute mark and several over the maximum 2 minutes. While some topics were testing (the writer certainly felt so!) they did provide excellent answers by everyone and had most of us thinking deeply about our responses. Jan was selected as the Best Table Topic speaker of the night with her subject "If you could uninvent a recent development what would it be?" her answer Artificial Intelligence!

After supper (somebody forgot the biscuits) we had the evaluation section of the meeting and all the Evaluators did extremely well, Ros, Andy and Song were able to find plenty of commendations for their speakers and generally a suggestion or two how they thought the speaker could have improved their speech. Kudos goes to Andy who set out to achieve his evaluation in the 'third person' and totally achieved this feat, rather than talking directly to his speaker but including everyone in his evaluation.(as it should be done!).

Graeme spoke briefly about the Table Topics as there Evaluator but was so taken with Jan's speech that he was unable to complete a full evaluation. ("But we all did very well" as Mr Grace from Are You being Served would say!!)

Craig wound up the meeting with his General Evaluation assisted by the Time Keeper Jan (very efficiently) and Grammarian, Denise who did a magnificent job in this role, with many comments for the speakers on the use of grammar(and the word) during the evening.

CONGRATULATIONS go to Jan, who on Sunday won the Division R Evaluation Contest (Division R, being Manawatu & Hawkes Bay Clubs) and together with our Ros (who won the Division R Table Topics Contest) go onto the District 112 (basically North Island-except Wellington) finals 6/7th May in Auckland.  A tremendous effort by our Club to have two members representing us at District level. We wish them well.

Best Speaker; Jan; 

Best Table Topic; Jan: 

Best Evaluator; Andy; 

Best Contribution; Tony.

Our next meeting is the THIRD MONDAY (17th April) due to Easter Weekend next week and then Anzac Day, on Tuesday 25th April, following the 4th Monday.

Toastmaster for the 17th is Ian.