Blog for last Thursday's meeting

Last fortnights meeting was held on a Thursday as 1/2 the club had a meeting at the usual Toastmaster's time.  The meeting was held in room 9C18, which was a better room than we have been having.

Fortunately future Friday meetings will also now be held in room 9C18(ie building 9 level c room 18).

The meeting got off to a slightly late start.  Peter gavve the Mission Statement from memory.  It would be a good idea to put the Mission Statement back on the agenda to help those Toastmasters who memorised it.  Karina quickly rejigged the agenda to allow for speaker one's absence.  Ianon gave an inspiration of the day rather than a word of the day - no one can whistle a syphony, it takes a whole orchestra to play one.  That is how we run the Toastmasters club.

Keiko gave a very engaging, animated speech on effective evaluation.  Nicole did her second speech from the CC manual.  The improvement in her speaking since she started with Benjamin was obvious.  She gave an interesting, and moving, speech on the differences between Chinese students in China and international students in Australia.

Baran came up with great Table Topics:
Nicole spoke on the difference between the education system in China and Australia.
Karina spoke on how she manages stress.
Ann spoke on whether she believed that if kids watch TV all day they have less vocabulary than if they don't.  She argued, contrary to the context behind the question, that TV can in fact improve vocabulary.
Peter spoke on what should be done to reduce the number of homeless in Canberra.
Geoff spoke on what he thought would be a better system of government than our current system.
Dominic gave an open-ended philosophical response to the question of he he wanted people to believe in something, what would it be?
Dominic then gave an excellent appraisal of Keiko's speech.  Ann gave an excellent appraisal of Nicole's speech, focusing on the educational content and presentation style.
When giving the questions Baran also gave some context as a preamble to the question.
Peter gave a generic tabletopics evaluation, addressing eye content for all speakers, then moving around, body language and finally the speech structure.

Next meeting will Friday 13 June at 12:30, room 9c18.

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Alert: change of day and room for last meeting in May

We are having our meeting on Thursday 29 May, instead of Friday 30 May, as a once only change. 

And Karina has managed to make a once-off booking for us in room 9C18.

Building 9, level C, room 18,
12.30 - 1.30 Thursday 29 May. 

We look forward to seeing everyone then. 

Table Topics: a fortnightly chance to exercise imagination!

Lili organised the Table Topics at our 16 May meeting, last week. She took a highly original approach which worked successfully, allowing for plenty of imagination, humour and good feelings. Lili asked us all to write a secret on a slip of paper. Then she collected the papers up into a box and passed them back out to us, making sure we didn’t get our own.

‘I nearly drowned when I was young!’, was one secret. ‘I always wanted to be a pilot!’ was another. And what about ‘I found a gold nugget!’? There were 8 of our (now 12) members at the meeting, and almost all the secrets were equally intriguing.

To respond to these topics, the speaker first had to guess which of us had written the secret, and explain the reason for the guess, and then to elaborate on their own secret (after it had been spoken about). The guessing and reasoning were very humorous, and often quite stilted. In contrast, as soon as speakers began to explain their own secrets they became fluent and passionate. What a great way to run Table Topics, giving us all a really different experience from normal. Congratulations Lili.

Our President, Ianon, also welcomed Lili as one of our new members, with a short speech.

The rest of the meeting followed a more usual course. Peter offered 'Leadership’ as our Word of the Day. Then Ann had a go at presenting an organised speech (project 2 in the Competent Communicator manual) about ‘Running a display’. She suggested three objectives: (i) know what outcome you aim to achieve via the display (e.g. greater awareness of the organisation?, or more people registering for an upcoming event?, or…); (ii) present a simple clear message that will achieve that outcome; (iii) aim for minimum effort (e.g. only a few small handouts, and a banner fronted by a knowledgeable rep., rather than piles of books, things for sale, etc.). Having just three main points helped Ann to keep the speech organised!

Next meeting, 30 May. 

Yet another icebreaker! 2 May 2014

We had one of our usual well-attended and exemplary meetings on 2 May, with only one member absent. We welcomed guest Baran, who has also visited the club previously. Nicole gave her first speech, her ‘icebreaker’, which was well prepared and told us about her life in Australia so far. She has lived in several cities and found them all different. She appeared remarkably relaxed, speaking without notes for most of the time!  Dominic’s evaluation was very positive, including one recommendation. Karina then offered a set of challenging Table Topics, which gave impromptu speaking opportunities to everyone who was not otherwise speaking at the meeting. Topics included: Your favourite animal?, Do you like uncertainty?, Is formal education better than informal?  Geoff gave the table topics evaluation, including an evaluation of his own topic.   

The meeting on May 2 included election of the club’s office bearers for 2014-15 and the distribution of the annual-general-meeting reports for 2013-14. Linda, our new member who is also currently President of the ANU’s ‘University Club’, conducted the election. There being no competing nominations, no voting was required. The new officers will be listed on the club details page nearer their start date of 1 July.

Next meeting is on Friday 16 May. 

Meeting of Wed 16 April 2014 - two icebreakers!

This fortnight's meet was held on Wednesday due to the Good Friday public holiday.  It started a little late as some members had trouble finding the different room. Geoff played dual roles of SAA and Toastmaster, and also rescued some members who couldn't find the room.  Lucky we had mobile phones!
Karina gave the first icebreaker, titled Life, Love & Learning.  It was an interesting philosophical take on her life, and certainly let us get to know her better.  She had a lot to say and went well over time.  Lili gave the next icebreaker, explaining how she accidentally became a hydrologist.  This gave us an interesting insight into another culture.
Nicole gave three interesting table topics:
  - Karina was asked to assess whether a private tutor is a stable job, giving a well reasoned response.
  - Ianon was asked about her favourite colour, and what feelings or moods it causes her.  This was a very apt question for Ianon, and she described the feelings associated with a number of colours.
  - Peter H was asked if interpersonal relationships are very important, and how do you establish them.  He argued that such relationships are important, and described ways of establishing a variety of relationship types.

Peter then gave the general evaluation, usefully educating the new members about the commend, recommend, commend approach to evaluating speeches.
Overall it was a fun meeting.