Cats

Hi,

 

Another excellent meeting on Thursday, well run by Toastmaster Jan, who kept us all to task and was assisted by the Timekeeper Jen, which enabled us to finish on time at 1.00pm. Again the room was well set up by Graeme & Ian, who do an excellent job behind the scenes every week setting up and dismantling the room, so that when the majority of members walk in it is already to go.

13 members attended and were entertained initially by a speech from Jane, this was “Speaking of the cuff” assignment where the Speaker gives their Evaluator five topics, and the Evaluator chooses one for the speech. The topics were in sealed envelope’s and Ian(Evaluator) allowed Jane to choose one of the envelopes. The topic she ended up with was “Weight Watchers” although she turned this around to “Weight Control”. The 5-7 minute presentation went extremely well and was very interesting, although I doubt if a number of the audience will be subscribing to her message (nofried foods, no soft drinks, no roasts, no french fries and on it went with no, no no!) this may work for some (and obviously does for Jane) but I much prefer to eat what I like and work it off!! A great presentation however, and we look at how it was presented not so much in what was said.

 

Next was the 2nd Official visit from the Area D2 Governor (that’s me), my role is to visit all the Clubs in the Area (Napier,Pania,Bay City, Hastings, Havelock North and Magpie) ‘officially’ twice during my term of office and address the members.I do attempt to encourage participation in the Club and to encourage guests to come along, while members continue to grow from the benefits of Toastmasters. I concluded my presentation with a Toast that I presented to the Club on its 20th Anniversary in November 2004, which seemed to go down quite well. It includes a bit of history  off the Club in a rhyming couplets format and will hopefully be put on the Blog site in the near future.

 

Mike  presented Table Topics, with Wendy giving her opinion on Gareth Morgan’s idea about getting rid of cats ( I gathered she was against the idea!!), Viv replied from the Cat’s point of view, she was definitely against the idea, and hissed and clawed her way to rally all cats to band together and GET Gareth Morgan, with no doubt catastrophic results. Graeme told us that there was too much money in professional sport these days and Daryll had a word thrown at him to talk about for 1 min, Eucalyptus , and handled the assignment extremely well, even suggesting it was a great word to us in a “wordfinder puzzle”. For his efforts he received the “Best Table Topics” Award.

 

Ian gave us a brief evaluation of Jane’s presentation (she was awarded “ Best Speaker”) and Laurence then gave us his General Evaluation, commending Jan on the control and running of the meeting and giving good feedback to all the speakers, including a very valid recommendation for the Area Governor!

 

General business included a reminder about the Club Leadership Training next Thursday 14th February in Hastings, that Napier Club are looking for a Test Speaker for their Evaluation contest on 25th February,( a great way to get well evaluated) and also the presentation to Jane of her Advanced Communicator-Silver certificate. Jane finished this off late last year and has done really well to reach this goal with over 30 speeches behind her plus a couple of very well run Education sessions. Congratulations Jane. You know that this is the 5th Advanced Communication Award the members have achieved this year to date, excellent for the members and the Club.

 

The meeting concluded with the Mission Statement being read! NO it was not a back to front meeting.

See you all next Thursday.

 

Also a very special Thanks to Barbara for her continuing Monthly Newsletter, interesting and informative, well done Barbara, keep up the excellent work.