Who knew that we could fit so many geographic locations in just one meeting? Our latest meeting on Tuesday, July 16th was an engaging and educational one.
What happened?
Caroline Gormley (Secretary of our club) did a great job of stepping in as President tonight. She opened the stage for Hannah Redgewell who took on the role of Toastmaster for the evening! Hannah’s friendly attitude definitely made all our guests and members feel at ease.
We started off as always with Table Topics. For those who don’t know, Table Topics is a section of our meeting where our Table Topics Master picks any topic for 5 to 6 of our guests and members to speak about for 1 – 2 minutes! All speeches are impromptu so everyone can practice and prepare for those moments in life when you are just suddenly asked to speak.
Table Topics
As a proud Canadian, Nicole Shermet chose Canada as a theme for the table topics section. Questions ranged from favourite comedians and actors to hockey or ways of eating bagels. The well chosen topic was definitely educational and everyone had the chance to learn more about Canada.
Prepared Speeches
After a quick networking break (filled with tea and good chats), the meeting proceeded into the prepared speeches part. We had the pleasure of hearing:
- James Lagrange giving his icebreaker speech on “The Boy Who Thought He Could Fly”. His journey from South Africa definitely enabled everyone to learn more about him!
- Matilda Hay giving her speech entitled “On the Run”. Thanks to Matilda, we now all know how to be better fugitives 🙂
- Nelia Ochner giving her speech on “Coronado”. Her trip to this Californian location made us all want to travel!
- Shamim Ahmed giving his speech on an “Inner City Escape”. We definitely gained a good insight into the prevalence of crime in the inner city.
Evaluation
How can we improve if we don’t receive feedback? That is why in every session, we always have our members provide feedback and points for improvement to our speakers. We also had a special guest – David Jones (Six-time District Table Topics Contest Winner) who came in to evaluate all our members who took on a functionary role.
- Bhavan Ramanathan evaluated James’ icebreaker
- Rachel De Cesaro evaluated Matilda’s speech – “On the Run”
- Agnes evaluated Nelia’s speech “Coronado”
- Cristelle evaluated Shamim’s speech “Inner City Escape”
David Jones, our guest General Evaluator for the night gave the club really helpful tips which included:
- Having the confidence to do it and not say “I will TRY my best”. We know you CAN!
- Projecting our voices in a large location.
- Slowing down when speaking.
- Not using cliches.
Winners and special mentions
- Stefanos Antypas won the Table Topics section
- Matilda Hay won the Prepared Speech section
- Cristelle Delaporte won the Evaluation Speech section
- James Lagrange did his first icebreaker!
- Caroline Gormley did a great job as Acting President
- Hannah Redgewell led a very engaged meeting.
- David Jones – Thank you for coming in and providing your feedback!
Missed this meeting? Catch us for more in out next meeting on Tuesday 30th July at 6.30pm!
