"The AGM was Under Milk Wood"

Toastmasters meeting 17 May 2018:

A quick Annual General Meeting Under Milk Wood

Today's Toastmasters was an historic one.

Not only because we listened to a beautiful bard, and had excellent evaluation's, it was the Pania's first and fastest (ever?) AGM!

First of we started with the very intense radio drama presented by Mike from poet Dylan Thomas called "Under Milk Wood."

A marvellous well presented bard echoing the silence of a small town in the dark of the night.

Because we all know Mike as an expressive speaker, this bard with all it's whispering, voice pitches and pauses was an exemplary performed, beautiful story.

Noel evaluated Mike's bard with good analytical quality together with a useful and well explained recommendation, next to all the rightful comments.

Next up was our AGM (Annual General Meeting) presented by our current and   next President of Pania Toastmasters: Marc.

Within a short time frame, Marc was able to get through the Executive Reports, Financial Report, Election of Officers and our upcoming Club Social Dinner at the right pace throughout .

Also present this meeting was the Toastmasters Area Director, Christine , she used this opportunity to have a short talk about the challenges for the Toastmasters 'community', splitting of the Districts into two smaller ones with the advantage to be more visual. She spoke also about the introduction of the Pathways program, gave special thanks to the current and new executive officers and Christine ended her talk with the reference of AI and computers taking over a lot of different jobs, except the jobs with high degree of personal communication, and for the same reason (sales was one of the lowest occupations expected to be taken over by automation) she praised Toastmasters for the ability to improve the personal communication so important in the sales process of one to one.

Our Table Topics was presented by our colourful Laurel. She introduced the magnificent colours in the rainbow and gave all the colours present, in the right sequence(ROYGBIV). The table topics were related to one of the colours each contributor was allowed to pick.

Kristy went for the things that makes you see Red and revealed some spicy private matters and her Red busy work life.

Greame picked the Blue for the question if we have sufficient Blue police with our growing violent society. And for a long time...Graeme actually answered a Table Topics question! With a firm NO. He also questioned if the huge amount of people we do need would be able to meet the high demanding profile and mentioned he has a lot of respect for police officers.

Tamara stated she likes the positive influence of Orange that much she would like to encourage people to take more advantage of the Orange traffic lights. Why not?

Linda's Violet with the reference to roses and violets was asked how she'd handle rude and objective people. Linda answered that question from her profession as psychologist and stated that anger is an primal emotion we need to take control of our self and the best way to start is with a lot of marshmallow-control!!.

Christine picked the NZ clean Green country question and stated that NZ is not that green as we think it should be and asked to mind our and others behaviour in throwing away rubbish.

Laurel ended the superb Table Topics with the question for all of us: "Where does your Yellow brick road lead you?" An excellent session with some colourful answers!

Last and certainly not least was the first Table Topics Evaluation from Lou. And in exactly 3 minutes she was able to make very good commendations for every speaker and she did also made some good recommendations. Evaluations at Toastmasters is one of the most challenging parts and Lou did make a very good impression with added value for this and her upcoming evaluations.

Patrick completed the meeting with his General Evaluation assisted by the timekeeper Darryl, who advised that we started early, but the Toastmaster of the day, Craig, said it was the Toastmaster's prerogative and we had a very full program to complete, which we managed on time.

Best Speaker; Mike

Best Evaluator; Lou

Best Table Topic; Graeme

Officers selected for the Upcoming Toastmaster's Year commencing 1st July 2018 were;

PRESIDENT; Marc

V/P EDUCATION; Patrick

V/P MEMBERSHIP; Jen

V/P PUBLIC RELATIONS; Tamara

SECRETARY; Craig

TREASURER; Carol

SGT at ARMS; Graeme

That's how we roll at Toastmasters Pania.