Toastmasters Meeting No 1088, 4th March

Toastmaster was Helen McLeod – Theme of the meeting was “Time Travel”

Max Delaney was the grammarian who challenged us to weave the word “Euphoria” into our speaking throughout the morning.

1st Speaker was Cam Parsonson who conducted a 25minute webinar, “How to up your Zoom Game”. This was a wide-ranging and content-rich presentation to assist improve our performance on zoom and to appreciate some of its capabilities.

We then had an impromptu speaking session lead by Deb McAlpine – 2 minutes of “Time Travel”.

Speakers:

Sabine on the method of travel.

Henry on period to travel to – dinosaurs.

Mazon on his favourite time – university.

Steven on the year (‘clean’) 2500.

Matt, how far to travel into the future?

Roydon, is it ok to change the past?

The Toastie Award was awarded to Rachel Walton for a well crafted impromptu speech.

This was an informative, absorbing and fun meeting.

The morning kicked off with Sabine’s speech ‘Different Sides of Me’. An experienced Toastmaster who took the opportunity to share a side to her that not many had seen before. Sabine’s humorous delivery coupled with well-timed slideshow pictures captivated us as we delved into her past. I can say with confidence that everyone is looking forward to the rest of Sabine’s humorous speeches.

Following Sabine was Gerald with his speech ‘Motivate Me’. Gerald engaged us using anecdotes from both his professional and personal life. He drew comparisons between applying self-motivation and team motivation, leading to a well-structured speech with beneficial learnings for the audience.

After the break we were treated to a large impromptu speech session from Louise centred around the theme, ‘Best Birthday Eva.. or…!?’. Natalie talked about her milestone birthday at New Brighton Pools, Helen on who she would donate to on her birthday, Cam on birthday skipping 4^th September because it didn’t count in 2011, Joji on his fascinating two birthdays a year, Dee on the best gift she is going to give, and finally David on his un-birthday surprise of a nice morning walk before sunrise in Pegasus Bay.

It turns out that you can fit a lot of entertainment and public speaking practice into an hour and a half on a Friday morning.

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

Being able to gather your thoughts and put together a short, impromptu 1-2 minute speech on the spot is definitely a challenge. It was encouraging to see a mix of our more experienced and newer members take up the challenge and deliver some cracking speeches in response to the question “What motivates you?”.

Congratulations and well done to everyone who took part, and particular congrats to Cam Parsonson who took out 1st place, and in 2nd place, David Cooper. Cam and David will both go on to represent Boaters Toastmasters in the Area Contest. We know you’ll be amazing!!