"CAMPERVANS and OTHER JOURNEYS"

“Campervans and other journeys”

What a wonderful meeting we had on Thursday.

Our Toastmaster was Anna, who ran the meeting with great energy and enthusiasm after trying to convince us she was grumpy from a recent break-in.

There was a group reading of the mission statement and then we were into the speeches proper, with Carol giving a warm introduction to our first speaker, Lou. I was particularly impressed the way Carol referred to Lou’s earlier speeches and how much she had developed since then.

Lou gave us an extremely entertaining presentation of her time in a campervan touring the South Island, titled “If only we had a four-wheel drive”. This was her fifth speech from the CC manual and she easily met her objectives around gestures. I thought Lou’s vocal variety was also excellent as she spoke about bumpy roads and too many other people doing the same thing.

Our next presenter was our Area Director, Kerry  who was conducting one of her biannual visits to the club. Kerry spoke about our Toastmasters experience and how we need to see it as something more than just for professional development. I recommended that as we had guests it would’ve been nice to briefly explain the TM structure within NZ.

Mike was our Table Topics Master and he started off by indicating things were going to be a little bit different, asking those involved to present a rolling story. Mike started things off before passing over to bug eating cave dweller Tamara who then handed on to our river floating Tarzan Craig. Who would follow Tarzan, but the club’s very own Jane (aka Anna), bringing in biodiversity and a couple of “Kapows”, finishing with the greatest escapologist of all time Graeme. He even managed to include a reference to Lou’s speech, bringing an end to a thoroughly entertaining session.

It was time for feedback and Carol kicked things off with a positive and encouraging evaluation of Lou and how she had met the speech objectives. Great summation at the end, although I did notice there were a few um’s that crept in to her introduction and evaluation

Paula was a first-timer evaluating Table Topics and also did a fabulous job, coming up with some great observations and also a recommendation for almost everyone. I assured her not to worry if you can’t come up with one for every speaker as I believe we have a very high standard of speakers in our club. Her use of the letters “mmm” were particularly telling.

Heather was also a newbie in her role of timekeeper, which she completed with great aplomb. This is a surprisingly challenging role, as we all know, and she did a great job keeping track of us all.

I then presented my General Evaluators report, which surely was the highlight of the meeting; wasn’t it? Okay, maybe in mind only… 😉

It was great to see two new guests at the meeting, Julie and Jennifer from NZTA. Jennifer has already indicated she wants to join and hopefully Julie will follow suit. Both were given the opportunity to speak at the end of the meeting and their comments were encouraging.

Thanks to everyone for a truly enjoyable meeting.