"INSPIRING INFORMATION"

Meeting for the 17th of August: Inspiring Information

Toastmaster Graeme kicked if off this very informative meeting with a warm friendly, humorous introduction.

Laurel was the grammarian and chose ‘onomatopoeia’ as word of the day and gave a couple of examples including ‘belch’ and mentioned how such words have ‘fabulous energy, are vital and how they enrich the language’.

Carol introduced Kerry, the first speaker who was doing project eight on visual aids.  She explained the objectives and primed the audience with words such as ‘succulent’, ‘vivacious’ and ‘juices flowing which made everyone sit up and paying extra attention to Kerry.

 Kerry used great humour especially for her rabbit story at the end and  effectively wove in onomatopoeic words. She talked about a tool she uses in her work as a healthcare professional in terms of summing up requirements and recommendations.

ISBAR –

Identify

Situation

Background

Assessment

Recommendation)

 She like Craig also had a very useful handout.

Craig took the word of the day very seriously with ‘wham, pow, bang ’  at just the right vital and energetic volume for the an extended business session and woke those up who were nodding off. He talked about the combined humorous speech and table topics contests on the 24^th of August at 7pm at Atawhai Village in Taradale, for wine and cheese for something completely new.

·      For the table topics contest he talked about the need to speak to the topic and mentioned that the area final if on the 15^th of September.  They are two minutes long and he urged everyone to give it a go

·      Formula - need opening/body/conclusion

·      Past present future or PREP everyone has point of view, give the point of view, reason, example and sum up your point of view again at the end.

·      For the humorous contest, Craig reiterated that it’s not a series of one liners

·      Has to be a speech, can be a manual assignment

·      It’s seven minutes long

·      Aim to utilise exaggeration, make fun of a personal experience, it doesn’t need to be true

·      Aim for a topic everyone can relate to

·      He called on Graeme for some fantastic short sharp tips such as trying to gain the audience’s attention as quickly as possible

·      Laurel also mentioned that she has the memory winning the humorous speech in the 2009 final on Auckland’s North Shore with ‘Captain I B fearless’ and Graeme’s superb use of exaggeration.

Helen’s theme for table topics was introductions. She had a bag of props, which is always a lot of fun and the speaker had to pull one out and introduce it.

Barbara very ably evaluated table topics with very positive, specific feedback.  For Noel she suggested he correctly identify his prop as a lemon, rather than an orange and commended Stephanie for following through with her story line for her can of tomatoes.

Anna, General Evaluator,  summed up the meeting effectively with the assistance of the Timekeeper, Jane and Grammarian Laurel

A very informative meeting with lots of humour!