"GEERT HOFSTEDE-THE SUCCESSFUL NERD?"

Another successful Pania meeting on Thursday 18th August.

Patrick was the Toastmaster, for the first time and he handled the role extremely well. As the TM’s table was pushed back (to allow room for Noel’s video), he made a point of moving away from the table, each time he spoke, to where he could be easily seen by the audience. He also produced a well designed meeting programme.

In Graeme’s introduction and evaluation of Emma, he read and re-read the objectives, which included the use of triads. For those, like me, who did not know what a triad is in this context, the following is the Wikipedia explanation:

The rule of three or power of three is a writing principle that suggests that things that come in threes are funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things. The reader or audience of this form of text is also thereby more likely to remember the information. This is because having three entities combines both brevity and rhythm with having the smallest amount of information to create a pattern. It makes the author or speaker appear knowledgeable while being both simple and catchy.

Emma gave an excellent presentation entitled The Successful Nerd. She told us about being a contestant on a British TV game show, complete with role play, (ably assisted by Darryl) and consequently winning a trip to Hong Kong.

Graeme gave a very good evaluation of Emma’s speech with three suggestions: Slow down, use pause and don’t stand too close to the audience.

Noel made use of a projector to give a very interesting Power Point presentation to explain the difficulties of communicating with workplaces in different countries.

Noel used data from Professor Geert Hofstede who has studied the cultural and behavioural differences of many countries, in this case New Zealand and Malaysia and used graphs to show the differences.

Noel was very well evaluated by Wendy, with the recommendation to use a pointer. Although, Wendy spoke directly to Noel, rather than speaking in the third person.

Table Topics was conducted by Marc with the topics being very current affairs.

The speakers and subjects were:

Linda - H N water quality. Should heads roll?

Anna - Should we care about Auckland’s housing crisis?

Laurel – US election. Should we care?

Jane – Olympics. Are our expectations too high?

All the speakers spoke well and to the subject.

Table Topics was evaluated by Darryl, who gave good feedback to each speaker.

Russell kept the lights and Mike gave a full and proficient General Evaluation to wind up the meeting.

Best speaker – Emma.

Best Evaluator – Graeme.

Best Table Topics – Linda.

NEXT WEEK WE HAVE THE TABLE TOPICS CONTEST- Be in- to win!!