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.
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