The Biodiversity of Shoplifters
What a well led meeting we had on Thursday 8th June well led by the Toastmaster of the day Linda. by Linda.At Pania Toastmasters we are always under time pressure with our 50minute meeting and Linda handled this extremely well with focus on the speakers and Table Topics without the impression, nor need to rush.
Our first speaker was Sandy, introduced by Carol.
Sandy talked about her passion: "New Zealand native plants".
The current statistics in NZ: 65% forest destroyed, 85% wetlands
destroyed. With these habitat reductions many animal species are extinct also. With the uniqueness of NZ biodiversity: 80% of naturally occurring plants in NZ
('native') are endemic: They grow only in NZ and nowhere else in the
world!
Many species and the forests like podocarp forest and southern beech
forests are living fossils developed 1,000s of years ago and have changed little since
- dinosaur forests! We have a reduced, threatened heritage, a global treasure and every endemic species we lose will vanish from the world.
Sandy concluded her emotional facts based presentation with a call
for action to plant a native tree in our own back yard.
A beautiful personal presentation!. Sandy is obviously very passionate about this subject and that came through strongly in her speech which is only her third third
presentation and she demonstrated how much she has improved already and so I’m looking forward
for her next presentation.
Because of the importance of Biodiversity for us kiwi’s, Sandy shared
a few links:
In Sandy's evaluation from Carol she gave a
lot of valid commendations and recommended, due to the relevance of and the
amount of information, handouts would have been helpful for the audience to remember much of the information.
The second speaker in our meeting was Russell, and Laurel introduced
him in a very professional way.
Russell's presentation was from the perspective of the Napier
Council about the renovation and upgrade of our Stadium. Russell stated the
advantages for this renovation and presented the beautiful and high tech
features of the multi-sport and multi-event centre. After this
information there was time for questions and he withstood those from a critical and
concerned audience.
In her evaluation Laurel complimented Russell for his marvellous
duplication of how the Napier Council always presents information like this, so
she was able to recommend to Russell (and the Council) that a customer
focussed approach would work a lot better than a self-centred presentation. This was, (almost), followed by a standing ovation.!!!
Table Topics were next run by Jen who asked our fellow Toastmasters to talk about some of her most irritating
cumbersome moments in life. Table Topics also reveals a lot about how the Table
Topic Master undergoes his/her day-to-day survival.
In this Table Topics Helen ignored the venomous Jen who snatched the
only newspaper in the waiting room after which Helen actually talked to people.
Graeme revealed not 'pot' the shoplifter but instead he broaches them on the error of their ways by
really getting serious with them. Yeah, kinda scary,isn't it? Carol admitted
she is a shoplifter too. Not to get more familiar with Gaeme, no, to get the
attention of a distracted counter employee in the middle of a personal phone
call.
Do we
really need a derivation to cover up for the revelation of our primary needs?
Table Topics will tell you.
An excellent meeting again, see you all next week.
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