In a meeting of many 'firsts' our Toastmaster of the day, Linda ran an excellent program at Pania Toastmaster's meeting on 11th October. Well drawn up, clear, uncomplicated program and a wonderfully warm welcome assisted Linda to make the meeting an excellent one! We had two guests (who were there for the third time,) Julie & Jenny, next time they may be Toastmasters!! It was also great to see Jane & Russell back with us after their winter break.
Grammarian of the day, Graeme introduced his word 'enuciate', which we were encouraged to not only use but action!
The first first! was the introduction of our first speaker Anna, by Paula (her first introduction and evaluation). Paula gave a friendly and encouraging introduction to Anna, who as a experienced Toastmaster was doing her first assignment on the Pathways program of "Innovative Planning". The speech was called "The Big 50" and Anna gave us an insight into what Toastmasters has been able to do for her over the past 10 years or so first in Auckland and more recently in the Bay. A very interesting presentation laced with great body language, humour and vocal variety which would have been a wonderful advertisement for Toastmasters to a non-toastmaster's audience.
Well done Anna, you have come a long way and will, we know, continue on the journey with further improvements
Paula gave an excellent 'first' evaluation with much commendation for Anna , but also was able to comment an a couple of areas that she thought Anna could have improved with suitable recommendations.Never easy for a 'first' time Evaluator to evaluate an experienced speaker but Paula excelled and will also learn from the experience.
Next up, we had a wonderful Ice Breaker from a 'first' time speaker in Heather, introduced by Jen. This speech was entitled "Has Wonder Woman Returned?" with reference by Heather to a Table Topic she did a meeting or two ago when she morphed into Wonder Woman. What an excellent idea and so well carried through, we really enjoyed hearing and learning more about Heather and why she has come to Toastmasters. Great use of construction of the speech, voice modulation, word usage and gestures encourgaed Jen in her evaluation to say that Heather is obviously a 'closet toastmaster'! (and now she is out of the closet-great!!). Congratulations Heather, we look forward to your next character.
Jen was full of well deserved commendations in her evaluation and Heather would rightly have felt proud of her efforts.
Following was Table Topics, run today by Carol, who produced a game where members drew a subject from a box and spoke on it. She was able to get through five members today being Jane, Mike,Sandy, and our two guests Julie and Jenny for their 'first' Table Topic. All spoke well to their respective topics and the guests particularly excelled themselves. A note that when a speaker gets a little stuck on a Topic, the Table Topic master should step in 'first' with a suggestion that may assist the speaker to carry on, many times the mind can go blank and a word or two can often trigger a 'first' thought to carry on with.
Well done to all who took part and the idea from Carol, the new ideas for Table Topics just keep on coming!!
Lou evaluated Table Topics and had comments and suggestions for most of the participants.
Craig wound up the meeting with the General Evaluator's report, assisted by Timekeeper Tamara and we actually finished right on time!! Great effort everyone. We do it all again next week with Tamara as the Toastmaster.
Best Speaker : Heather
Best Evaluator; Paula
Best Table Topic; Julie
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