"PANIA TOASTMASTERS ARE ADAPTABLE"

Thursday's meeting of Pania Toastmasters showed how adaptable the Club needs to be from time to time, one of our speakers was not available at the last minute (due to technical problems) and the other had an unwell child to look after. To cover it was felt that some of the contestants in last weeks Evaluation Contest could profit from some feedback on the contest, hence last minute changes to the scheduled agenda.

Graeme, Toastmaster for the day, posed the following three questions:
"What components do the Judges look for in an Evaluation Contest?"
"What part of the contest did you find the most difficult?"
"What did you learn from the experience?"
These questions generated a lot of discussion from the contestants and audience and it proved to be an interesting and worthwhile experience.

We had a special guest in past member Viv, and apologies were received from Craig,Barbara, David & Carol.

Cheryl replaced her speech with a bard reading, for which she chose readings from William Wordsworth, the first of these was called "Daffodils" which was a tribute to Spring and left us feeling really good, the second part was called "She dwelt among untrodden ways", which was quite the opposite to Daffodils and caught many of us by surprise!
Mike evaluated Cheryl's readings and provided two very good suggestions on how to improve the eye contact and also what to do with her notes, he concluded by praising Cheryl on the pace of her delivery, use of pause and vocal expression. A comprehensive evaluation, well done Mike.

Table Topics with Laurence had a political theme, the problem was 'Labour's Leadership Selection Circus' (Laurence's words not mine!), Ian was asked "should labour look for leaders inside Toastmasters-where leaders are made?" he gave an interesting and well worded reply. Graeme's subject was 'Labour borders on feeling like a 'cult' and he gave a two minute response so obviously either agreed or disagreed strongly! 'Labour's branding needs to change from red-what colour?', Viv chose purple and clarified her reasons well.
'What qualities are important in a leader?', Jen highlighted her answer with sincerity, 'Why should we chose you as a leader?' Jeanette (our newest member) responded very well as if she had anticipated the question, well done!
Wendy evaluated Table Topics and showed her experience by giving each speaker a commendation and a recommendation, thanks Wendy, your thoughts are very much appreciated.

General Evaluator, Darryl, continues to go from strength to strength, although relatively 'new' to evaluation he always provides well reasoned observations that all of us can find beneficial.Today's meeting was somewhat different to usual so thanks Darryl for taking on the challenge and handling it so well.
Ian gave he timekeeper's report and spoke of difficulty in not knowing when the lights should be used, with so many changes to the program as opposed to set speeches, I am sure that Toastmaster Graeme will learn from Ian's comments.

A very good meeting, lively and interesting, thanks to everyone!

Best Table Topics went to Jeanette.

See you all next week when hopefully we will be back to some type of normality in the meeting!

A special thanks to Graeme for the meeting report.