Louise encouraged us to reflect on our roots and how they shape who we are, setting the stage for a meeting inviting us to think about where we have come from.  Four members at the meeting came from Canada and the three members with McLeod Clan ancestry wore their tartan.

Word of the Day: Whakapapa

To enrich our discussions, Laura Cornall, our Grammarian, introduced the word of the day: Whakapapa. This term, which signifies genealogy or family ties, resonated with the theme as it reminded us of the stories that intertwine our lives and identities

Speeches:

The meeting featured a two engaging Icebreaker speeches, starting with Dean McLeod, introduced by Erika Andrews. Dean’s story, aptly titled “Me,” took us on a journey from his birthplace in Sydney to his childhood in Invercargill. With a Toastmaster mum, Dean grew up surrounded by public speaking inspiration. He shared delightful anecdotes about his two children and three grandchildren, whom he loves taking to parks for some outdoor fun. His professional journey, from building dairy sheds to becoming the Canterbury Manager at Stratco, showcased his versatile career. And let’s not forget Dean’s passion for travel, illustrated by his collection of “very expensive photos” adorning his walls!

Next up was Saxon Gordon, introduced by Roydon, who delivered a humorous and cautionary tale titled “How Not To Build A Motorcycle.” As an experienced Structural Engineer, Saxon dove into his past adventure of restoring a Kawasaki 200cc motorbike. His story, filled with lessons learned from not labeling parts and rushing the process, culminated in a shiny bike that never quite made it onto the road—now a stylish paperweight instead!

The final speech of the day was delivered by none other than World Champion Dan Vann, who introduced Aaron Webb, the Crusaders’ Manager. Fresh off their championship victory, Aaron’s speech, “I am a Labrador,” cleverly outlined his communication style through the traits of this beloved breed: calm, genuine, and approachable. He also shared his admiration for great leaders and emphasized the importance of authenticity in connection—traits that resonate deeply with all of us.

Our President, Ian Thornton, took a moment to reflect on his term before he hands over the reins to the new President at our next meeting. Sporting a new black hairstyle in honor of his son’s 30th birthday where he acted as “The Interrogator.” Ian presented awards to Erika for completing her Level 2, as well as to Alana who shared the Mic Drop award with Jacqui and Rachel in our annual club awards.

Table Topics: Engaging Discussions

After a brief intermission, Natalie Perzylo led an engaging Table Topics session. Participants shared their thoughts on various intriguing prompts. Helen McLeod envisioned launching a social initiative if money were no object, while Malvin Adicahya focused on survival essentials on a deserted island. Luke inspired us with thoughts on the potential impacts of AI over the next decade, and Thomas took us on a journey to Motanau Beach, sharing it as the most exciting place he’s ever travelled to.

Evaluations and Closing Remarks

The meeting wrapped up with evaluations from Alana Bogart for Dean, Jacqui Anderson for Saxon, Tom Palmer for Aaron, and Vivien Cowey for the Table Topics. General Evaluator Rachel McConnachie provided insightful feedback, followed by Timekeeper Laura Muir summarizing our time together.
As a fitting finale, Helen awarded both Icebreaker Speakers with the coveted Toastie Award, celebrating their brave beginnings on the Toastmasters stage.

In all, the Boaters Toastmasters meeting was a resounding success, highlighting the vibrant identities among our members and reminding us of the power of storytelling. We look forward to more inspiring meetings ahead!

Member blog: Helen McLeod

But first, before I get into the ACTUAL first things, a question I am often asked is “Why on earth would you get out of bed early on a June morning when it’s pitch black and freezing to head to a 7am Toastmasters meeting?”  Well, that’s  an easy one to answer, because my take is that once I’m there and the meeting’s underway, within minutes I’m glad I did; I always learn something new, have some laughs and hear some different perspectives.

Back to first things first

But I digress, so back to first things first. With a few members missing in midwinter action, Ian played Sgt at Arms as well as Toastmaster, getting proceedings underway bang on 7 o’clock seamlessly merging both roles and inviting Grammarian Alana Bogart to the stage to present her chosen Word of the Day… Kerfuffle.

Bringing her always upbeat energy to the stage, Alana had us smiling within moments as she walked us through the drama she encounters every time she fights with her purple puffer jacket and its double-zip action. Her animated delivery, humour, and her “I look forward to seeing someone else use it” challenge got us paying attention, laughing, and ready for Saxon to introduce the first speaker of the day.

This was Saxon’s first time in the Introducer role, but you’d never have guessed as he gave Hayley a comprehensive intro and warm welcome to the stage to deliver her first prepared speech, “Growing up in My Family.”

Hayley’s a comms professional and it shows. A reasonably recent member of the Boaters’ whānau, she’s already proven her word craft, taking out the Mighty Quill Award (for best blog of 2024-2025), and the glimpse she gave us of her home life, her family, her partner and her dogs was as entertaining as I’d hoped. But as engaging as Hayley’s tales were, the key message she left me with is that while she might be quiet (self-professed), she’s a fierce competitor and a salty loser (also self-professed). My take is that with contest season on the horizon, we’d better look out Boaters’ crew… we might just have us a new serious contender!

A bit of a leadership vibe

Speaking of serious contenders, our next two speeches both touched on leadership, in similar but different ways. Laura Cornell presented the first of the two, which, with a very literal title gave us a little clue as to what we were going to hear. And given Laura was an already experienced, confident presenter when she joined Boaters, I was keen to hear what that reason was! Turns out that she was inspired to improve her public speaking while watching one of her managers in action. This particular manager addressed people in an encouraging, inclusive way and Laura aspires to develop this same leadership style herself. With this in mind she sees Toastmasters as a training ground, a place where she can practice leading with empathy and encouragement; having watched her receive the 2024 -2025 “Always brings the vibe” award, I’d say she’s hitting that goal.

Our next speaker, Shaun Jacob tackled a Level 2 project from Dynamic Leadership that actually tasked him with looking at leadership styles. As a seasoned Toastmaster Shaun chose to immerse himself in the research aspect of the project, and rather than talking about the styles he personally related to, he instead ran us through the characteristics of five leadership styles (affiliative, altruistic, coaching, pace-setting and hierarchical), as they might relate to Jesus, or rather, whether Jesus would have related to them. I found it to be a really interesting take. While Shaun’s primary focus was on his message, his delivery was well polished and strong, and you could tell that he’d left the audience with something to think about.

More first things

It was also a blogging first for me as a 9am Digital Storytelling workshop across town meant I had to make it a meeting of two halves and hightail across town during the break. BUT being committed to the blogging cause, scheduled to present the Toastie Award for the week, and curious to experience what it’s like joining a hybrid meeting these days (it’s been a white), I threw my phone in the basket, my headphones on, and Zoomed on in as I pedalled through Hagley Park and over to UC.

Luckily, even though it was teeming with rain I had a decent tail wind, it was a zippy ride and quite the experience. I was entertained by some terrific Table Topics and some useful evaluations while I rode, including Felipe’s first time providing a General Evaluation. Felipe Ribas gets involved with everything, quietly, but enthusiastically.

Generous with ideas, insights, tips and inspiration, while I only got the audio version (had to watch where I was going… Health & Safety!!!!), it was no surprise that he took what could safely be called the ultra-marathon of evaluation roles, in his stride. It’s a role that requires you to actively listen for the ENTIRE meeting and then provide feedback and tips to a load of people. This is a challenging enough role to tackle when English is your first language, so hat’s off to Felipe for knocking it out of the park on his first attempt. I’ll bet he slept well on Friday night. That’s A LOT of concentration!

First time on the Chat channel

Just like I was by the time I arrived at UC, I’m running out of puff, so I’ll wrap the rest up quickly.

Another first today was happening over on the tech desk where Dean McLeod was driving the AV and Zoom components of the meeting for the first time. Given I was pedalling hard into a westerly as I biked across Hagley Park in the rain, I really appreciated his diligence and attention to the Zoom chat and was stoked that he caught my prompt in time to pass on the message to please award the Toastie to Helen McLeod (no relation as far as I know). Mission accomplished.

I suggest that if you want to know what other types of tales you’ll hear, skills you’ll develop or laughs you’ll have, come for a visit. I’m pretty sure you’ll leave feeling more alive and ready for the rest of Friday than when you walked in, and be glad you did! Go one… take that first step!

Member blog, Louise Landess

The session kicked off with Dan, our Sergeant At Arms, setting the tone with a nice bit of te reo and welcomed our guest Luke. He reminded us all that Dean is quite new to Boaters and congratulated him on stepping up so quickly to being Toastmaster.

Dean made us laugh by telling us his main memory of a road trip was from Christchurch to Invercargill – “boring”.

Hannah then joined the stage as our Grammarian. The choice of word for the day was “journey” in keeping with the road trip theme. She mentioned that there were physical journeys as well as journeys of development.

Rachel started her speech with a bag of Lego and proceeded to rather blandly describe physical attributes of the pieces of Lego and what you can do with it. This intrigued us and had us wondering what she was going to do / what point she was making. She put us out of our misery by explaining that it’s not the description of a product that sells it, but rather the perception of value. A good marketing project should connect to customers’ dreams, not the technical aspect of a product. It was a great lesson on how marketing works.

Lucy’s speech, entitled “I am in the Process of Becoming”, started with her explaining she could tell us about her job, or where she was from, but explained she wanted to talk about who she was becoming and that defining who she was is constantly changing. She told us how she used to let stuff happen to her until she moved to New Zealand at 22 and had an identity crisis. She found herself doing new things that realigned her life – which were not aligned with who she was. She realised that you need to unbecome everything you are not so you can become everything you are. It was a fantastic and inspiring speech which made us appreciate that you can become whoever you want and keep reinventing yourself.

Sabine took us through her journey to becoming a Distinguished Toastmaster. It was an excellent presentation and her key messages were embracing opportunities, doing things a little differently and remembering the basics like introducing yourself to guests.

Before the break, Ian, our President gave out the award certificates for those who were absent at the awards ceremony a few weeks ago.

Jacqui did an excellent job as Table Topics Master with some great topics about road trips: who and what you would take; would you follow bad advice from your GPS; where would you go if you won a campervan; disaster road trips; worst place stayed etc. These gave rise to lots of laughs and all the contestants answered with enthusiasm and even the two guests gave it a good go.

The evaluation stage continued with Shaun giving great feedback to Rachel, as well as Dan for Sabine. Roydon praised Lucy’s “animated” Icebreaker with “rich vocabulary” and told us to watch this space as he predicted a great public speaker. Aaron completed the evaluation section with excellent feedback to all presenters which was very helpful and personalized.

A very enjoyable session. Thanks to all who made it fun and inspiring.

Member blog by Tom Palmer

Ian Thornton relaunched his Toastmasters journey with his third Ice-breaker titled ‘TBC’ (to be continued). Louise Landess  told about a blog she is launching which will be celebrating great stuff being done in Christchurch. Then Sabine Pary gave us an educational speech highlighting the range of opportunities avaialble to us as members of Toastmasters.

Dee Bigelow followed by provoking our thinking with some engaging table topics on the meeting theme of fear and courage. She left us all with an interesting idea to consider: if you could turn your greatest fear into a small cuddly toy, what would you name it?

The star of the show was Dan who pulled it altogether as Toastmaster despite last minute absent roles due some of our members being unwell.

Member blog by Roydon Gibbs.

Ian Thornton started the ball rolling as Grammarian, quoting (without notes) an anonymous poem about an Oyster who didn’t give up against the relentless tide of sand but worked on improving. And, wouldn’t you know it, the sand turned into a pearl; a reminder that the Grammarian can read a poem, famous speech, article etc.

Harry Brar delivered an emotional speech about her parents’ insistence on her getting a good education to the point of encouraging local leaders to build a high school and then a university in their area.  They have been so supportive of all her ventures and are even accompanying her to learn Te Reo.

Gerald Hartley ran us through his journey to reach his level 5 Pathway and left us with plenty of helpful tips and tricks. Who knew that you needed about 700-800 words for a 5-7 minute speech?

Gerald outlined each of the projects he chose (where choosing was an option) and gave good examples of how the projects had helped in his work – eg. Going for a new job after doing the job interview project, and so much more. This really was an educational on how to use Pathways to your best advantage. The only downside to the speech was Gerald’s advance warning that he will be leaving Boaters at the end of the TM year. Such a huge loss for Boaters as Gerald has been a hard working and inspirational member both at meetings and in his many roles across the Leadership Team and Speechcraft courses. We can keep our fingers crossed that his work situation may enable him to rejoin us in the future. Go well and THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING.

Amazing Grace delivered her Ice Breaker this morning and what a treat to be taken from hiking in Sri Lanka to motorbiking in Vietnam (only briefly as these are probably all subjects for Grace to expand on in future speeches. Grace is about to embark on a new career venture, instead of the hillsides of Asia, Grace will be “wandering the mountains of the mind” as she starts her journey as a professional life coach. Great start to your Toastmasters Pathway.

The Introducers and Evaluators were all on the mark today – Alana rightly anticipated a shortage of time and adjusted her Timer report accordingly.

Our guest, Sheila Hailstone, encouraged us to attend the Toastmasters Do Comedy event on 27^th April.

Thoroughly enjoyed the meeting and made it worth getting up at 5:30am.

Meeting No. 1133, 31 March

That was the question Toastmaster Rachel Walton challenged us with this week at Boaters meeting number 1060.

Our multicultural Boaters team took us all on a trip around the world. Canada seemed a popular destination. But there were plenty of other locations on the list too, Brisbane Australia, England, the five ‘stans’ of Asia, St Petersburg Russia, Peru, Japan, Samoa, Iran, France and Frankfurt Germany.

Alana Vickery let us know that traveling to space was not on her list (not value for money) and Corrine let us know that cruise ships were a no-no for her. Gerald shared his passion for Japanese food and Joji added some Samoan cake.

Janet Robson took us back to her childhood as one of 13 country kids annoying mum at the dinner table, driving tractors into ponds and picking the neighbours fruit in her Icebreaker speech. I’m sure we can all look forward to hearing plenty more good stories from Janet as she progresses on her Toastmasters journey.

Finally, if you need a new bathroom (or loft) renovation Cam Parsonson is the man. As always Cam captured our attention with an entertaining and informative speech. I’m curious to see how many Boaters end up investing in a heated toilet seat. There are bound to be some great speeches waiting to come from that.

Toastmaster Natalie Perzylo chose a theme that is quite close for everyone – Moving on. And moreover, it was her last working day in Blind Foundation. So, she herself is moving on!

Something that was really useful to know (especially for me as a newbie) was discovering the different ways to be a Grammarian. Louise Green shared with us three manners:

Counting speakers’ ‘filler’ words – particularly ums and ahs – and giving them feedback at the end of meeting;

Picking a word, explaining its meaning and encouraging co-clubbers to use it

Or… drumroll… doing it Louise’s way, reciting poetry as a bard. She read “Moving on” written by prominent Australian author Banjo Paterson.

By the way, Louise might be moving on to Australia.

Our first speaker was Louise Landess. It seems she has many paths. This time she was managing a Difficult Audience of her Presentation Mastery Path at level 4. That was pleasantly unusual and involved an interactive delivery. Whatever the title meant ‘Disruption Schmuption’. I can’t explain but had a chance to feel a capturing atmosphere (it’s one of the benefits of your personal meeting presence). She listed three stages of her speech structure on a whiteboard as a way of effectively managing disruptors:

• Situation;
• Debate;
• Solution.

I was able to identify some club mates who tried to distract Louise from her narration of day light saving by talking about cow milking, mum problems, birthday parties. Louise managed situations quickly by questioning to distract disruptors, using other members to answer distractors’ questions, and engaging the audience with her brilliant humour. She built a structure to create moving on structure. Well done Louise!

Morgane Honore-Forde, as myself, is a new member. It was her first exciting Ice Breaker Speech (I remember that feeling – dread of public speaking). She told about herself with self-irony and great humour choosing a catchy title for the topic – Buffy is not the Vampire Slayer. No, her life is not a parody of American supernatural drama. Actually Morgane is French who loves steak and cheese pies more than baguettes! She is keen on travelling and has been doing it for the last 9 years and dreams to visit Peru and try 5 thousand varieties of potato. Oh, yea, Buffy. Buffy was Morgan’s beloved cat that passed away 8 years ago.

Table Topics Master was Aaron Gale. He picked up interesting people to talk spontaneously for 1.5 minute. It was enough for David Clarkson to play a scene from his childhood in Sherwood Forest. He used a sophisticated word for a tool that turned out to be a slingshot according to his highly performed gesturing. Jacqui Anderson told us about her love for primary public school and how she was disappointed in moving on to private high school. Our guest from Community House, Janet, introduced herself.

Evaluators: Rachel Walton, Dee Bigelow and Henry Thompson were equally nervous as speakers. Nevertheless, they gave encouraging feedback.

Madam Toastmaster was deeply impressed by Morgane’s sense of humour. So, Toastie Award walked away with Morgane Honore-Forde!

In conclusion I’d like to add that it was enjoyable (as always) Friday morning with Boaters Club mates and our guests Janet and Peter.

Sincerely yours Anna Smirnova

It was a pleasure to see Vivien as our Sergeant at Arms this morning, who opened the meeting by welcoming all our wonderful guests. She shone the Super Trouper light on our Toastmaster this morning, by providing a stirring introduction that almost left our (usually never lost for a word) Toastmaster Louise Landess speechless!

Our honorary conductor Louise gave thanks to the music and dedicated the theme of our meeting to the ‘soundtrack to our lives’ – the music that helped us through the highs and lows that we’ve experienced over the years.

Our Grammarian Anna showed no signs of “disillusion” by doing a fantastic job of taking the Grammarian role for the very first time.

Introducer Henry was surprised to learn about the many balls Sabine juggles at any one time… only for our Ringmaster Sabine to show us how it’s done! She delivered another inspirational rendition of her speech, “Dropping your Balls”, reminding us all that we never go it alone, and that we should reach out if we find it a struggle to juggle.

Helen bought up our second speaker this morning, Joe Rayen, as he released his long-awaited, highly anticipated Icebreaker speech. We learnt about his background, hobbies, and ambitions, which inspired him to get out there, to take a chance, and start his own company!

Next up was our Table Topics section. Alana is certainly no basket case when it comes to her most favourite role, the Table Topics Master! Music was the theme of the morning, as our speakers set the crowd ablaze with a lively, thrilling variety of impromptu speeches. It’s a hard climb to deliver the perfect Table Topic, but there ain’t no mountain high enough for this morning’s speakers!

Dee led the evaluation with some insightful commendations, and was impressed with the all the balls Sabine had in the air when she first delivered the speech in back October (and everything after!) Dee complimented Sabine for using the feedback from the original speech to help to improve this morning’s rendition.

Next up was our first-time evaluator Corinne, as she got to keep on delivering useful feedback, complimenting Joe on sharing his story with the club. Corinne provided recommendations and takeaways for his next speech, which hopefully won’t be too far away!

Cam gave us all we wanted out from a table topics evaluation – delivering observations, commendations, recommendations, all wrapped up with his signature sense of humour.

It was a beautiful day for Aaron, as he delivered a beautiful General Evaluation for the very first time. He provided some fantastic commendations and recommendations for all the presenters this morning who had not already been evaluated. Congratulations to Aaron for taking on one of the biggest roles in the club and doing so well with it!

Another first-timer was our timer this morning, Morgane, who did a wonderful job to keep the band in-tune and on-time. Well done for taking on your first club role, and here’s to many more!

Our Club president wrapped the meeting with a very special, extended version of our President’s Bulletin. She invited our guests this morning, both first-timer visitors and experienced Toastmasters, to come to the stage share their stories with the club. It was inspiring to hear the reasons our first-time guests had for visiting Boaters, and the ways our current members have grown, both personally and professionally, since joining Toastmasters.

Finally, the winner takes it all as Joe was awarded the Toastie Award for his Icebreaker speech!

Thank you to everyone who was involved for making our Demonstration meeting a huge success!

Today’s theme is Gratitude – Great theme always love this one.

Today’s Toastmaster is Helen MacLeod, which is based on her work and this theme is a protective practice for when life gets really hard.

There is hope  (Through gratitude)

Our Grammarian introduced the word of the day “sensuousness”

Oooh hello – that got a lot of laughs – a quality that relates to the pleasing of the senses…….. first introduced by the poet John Milton. There was a poem called “happy endings”, which wasn’t what we thought it was going to be.

How do you follow on from that one?

First Introducer is Sabine Parry for Natalie Perzylo – “sensuousness” seems to have really made everyone think!!!

Natalie used a murder mystery presentation to provide a different medium for teaching. Natalie originally used the presentation as a proposal to convince her board at work to do so through the use of technology.

Welcome to Aaron who was giving his “Ice Breaker” from the Dynamic Leadership path today – Aaron has had a lot of royal meetings in his early life and we were wondering why they weren’t dramatised in “The Crown”. Aaron’s speech is entitled The Roller Coaster of Life and this is Aaron’s ride. Born in Balclutha, Aaron is listed in their Wikipedia page!

(Exit Rachel stage right… enter Louise stage left)

A clever tidbit thrown into the mix was to challenge us to guess why. A clever way to get our full attention as we had to listen carefully, but as Aaron was an accomplished cricketer for a good decade or so, it was quite a hard guess (Google him and you’ll find the answer!!).

An interesting and entertaining Ice Breaker giving a taste of some great speeches in future. And congrats to Aaron, not only for breaking that ice, but he also took out the Toastie of the Day. Well done!

Gerald was up next with Ars Rhetorica, a speech about using effective and persuasive langue.  This was a Level 1 research project (Gerald is also following the Dynamic Leadership path) and he mentioned that one of the foundational texts on this subject was Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Latin: Ars Rhetorica); a book written thousands of years ago that is still relevant to this day. Gerald’s aim was to summarise and explain some of the key concepts detailed in this text, and judging by the audience’s response, he managed to do this well.

Our Table Topics Master, Stephen McConnachie was Zooming in this week and combined some clever thinking and technology to bring us the Wheel of Fortune – to select speakers. Unfortunately technology failed us, but then quick thinking and technology saved us as Gerald stepped in with his phone to relay the topics.

And of course, following speeches come the evaluations which, while based on the relevant speakers, offer commendations, recommendations and challenges we can all learn from. Here are three points that stuck with me:

• When trying to recall a point, instead of looking at the ceiling or floor, look out to the audience
• When delivering a long webinar, every 20 mins, break up the presentation with small activities that engage the audience
• Rather than prowling or wandering aimlessly, move deliberately and purposefully around the stage

Cam reported back that we had stuck pretty well to time – one of the most important attributes of an effective Toastmaster is the ability to stick to time and something that we all need to continually practice… a great reason to keep coming back. Who doesn’t love a speaker who sticks to time?

And speaking of time. It’s time to hit publish and look forward to next week where we get to come back and do it all again. So much learning, so much fun. Hope to see you there.