Summary of meeting held Friday 25 October 2013 Ianon was Toastmaster, again kicking off late because of late arrivals. She made a few small changes to the agenda, including substituting word of the day with a Tonic by Keiko. The Tonic was “everybody is lucky”, a way of looking at even bad events with an optimistic viewpoint. Dominic repeated his award winning humorous speech on “driving lesson lessons” – on the joys of teaching a child to drive, breaking the challenge into categories of movement, sound and ethics. Geoff then did the persuasive speech from the competent communicator manual, setting out to persuade the audience that climate change is good. Ann looked in shock at this heretical proposition. Geoff was not game to survey the audience to find if he successfully argued the case. This speech used some visual cues, and made reference to a current media issue – bush fire hazard, and personal experiences of Meryl. Sandy followed with a speech on Pandora’s Box – a discussion of early childhood trauma. This was a very interesting overview of the psychological impacts of early childhood trauma. This speech made effective use of the whiteboard and a prop – Pandora’s Box, with a symbol of hope. Time allowed only a short Table Topics session, with speeches from four of the ten people present. Both guests, Meryl and Mark, participated. Leona was the TT master, using picture cards as the topics. The first, given by Ianon, was on a basket of shells. Ianon spoke of her visit to a beach upon her arrival in Austrarlia, and how there does not seem to be as many shells on the beach these days. Ann spoke of her plans for Christmas, and pointed out how Christmas is not a time of celebration for everyone in Australia. Meryl spoke on what she packs in her suitcase – too much in short! And Mark finished with a talk on cars – which turned out to be a natural topic for him. Evaluations were constructive, with Leona giving the general evaluation. Meryl gave a rather creative um/ah report, declaring Geoff to the winner, with a count of 9 or 10. This is somewhat worse than Geoff’s recent efforts, but a solid improvement on his first speech, which was around 50!

Synopsis of the Benjamin Toastmasters meeting held Friday 11 October, 2013. The meeting got off to a late start due to late arrivals of members. As the agenda was particularly tight this week this meant the excellant Toastmaster, Geoff, had to run the meeting extremely tightly. Sarina was busy, firstly introducing word of the day 'slugabed", then doing the icebreaker, and also doing the um/ah count. Slugabed is a real word, at least according to the google search. Many speakers did get to use it, albeit pronouncing it "slugabug". The icebreaker was very well presented, and we certainly got to know more of Sarina. Ann was the first speaker up, doing a press conference project from the advanced communication manual.The topic was soil carbon management, but from a soil condition, rather than climate change perspective. The talk elicited some interesting questions, which needed to be guillotined to allow the meeting to finish on time. Following Serina's icebreaer SAndy ran an interesting Table Topics. Unfortunaltey not all members could participated due to the time constraint. Topics were: Views on zoos; One good reason for being late; Why is it good to be a slugabed; and Why Sunday os the best day.The evaluators gave good, useful feedback, with the general evaluator, oor (prospective?) mentor Linda reminding evaluators to have regard to speech objectives when evaluating speeches. Dont forget the Humorous Speech Competition this coming Saturday. Geoff;)

Report following meet of Benjamin Toastmasters on Fri 27 September 2013

The last meeting was an enthusiatic meeting, beginning with a Tonic by Keiko. The second speaker was Peter H., addressing the development of the Canberra water supply system, a topic I greatly enjouyed. Table Topics delivered by Carmen were fantastic: Which is more important? Intelligience or common sense? If you could choose one item of fashion from the past, what would it be? Plus other interesting topics. We had a number of visitors this meeting, including both visitors coming through personal contacts, and visitors responding to our on-line presnces. Please excuse spelling errors - I cannot see what I have written :( The web site is funny tonight.