North Shore Toastmasters
Club Meeting
February 7th, 2005
Dave Stewart
chaired a very full house on Monday, welcoming the joint meeting
of our club and the Logos Toastmasters Club, along with a number
of enthusiastic guests. Not a soul in the room would argue that
this evening did not send us home energized with uplifted
spirits. Contrary to obvious connotations of the theme
‘Controversy’, Dave and his team kept this word under the
control of thought-provoking muses and lighthearted
interpretations.
Omar Hung’s Inspiration was both
though-provoking and thoughtful, opening by naming some current
very controversial topics, and then inspiring us to use
‘respect’ as an antidote.
Jim Sinclair delivered his first
joke to us, an entertaining anecdote, just like a pro!
Wordsmith, Gerhard Rentsch, chose
the word ‘concede’ as a pairing with ‘controversy’, and
concluded that he had to concede he was a little disappointed
that more participants did not use his ‘Word of the Evening’.
However, he was full of praise for our abundant use of
descriptive words and phrases
Joyce Soti (Wizard of Ah’s), on the
other hand, was delighted with the dearth of “concede”s, which
allowed her zest for catching every single um and ah we used as
an opportunity to fatten our little piggy bank!
Stuart Manning was challenged but
did his best to keep this meeting on time, considering the
number of joint meeting guests to be seated before we began, and
the fully packed Agenda. One of the Highlights on this fully
packed Agenda was the Induction of our newest member, Marlene
Finlayson
Jan Khubyar ran a very creative and
lively Table Topics session. The Speakers initially took a
strong stand on one side of a topic, and on Jan’s signal they
immediately switched to a strong stand on the opposite side. It
was amazing how well everyone rose to this challenge, especially
with the high bar set by the first Speaker (and ultimate winner
of the Best Table Topic Award) Ted Armitage (Logos). The
General Evaluator accurately described the Table Topic
Evaluations by Sharen McRae (Logos) as ‘thoughtful observations’
delivered with humour and balance.
Li Ying Kao had fun making light of
the theme in her Toast: “Controversy … Take It or Leave It!”
This was followed by a brief description of the manuals we work
through to learn and practice the basic and more advanced
speaking skills (to enlighten all six new visitors), before
capably introducing the Speakers:
Wilma Atchison gave her first Club
Leader presentation; one which describes the advantages and
opportunities we have to look forward to when we give speeches
outside the comfort of our club. Wilma obviously enjoyed making
this potentially dry subject entertaining and attainable as she
led us through “Toastmaster Fitness”. Ruth Sol, Wilma’s
Evaluator, described her delivery as “…warm and sincere. If
‘sincerity’ isn’t an internal quality, then I’d like the
formula!”
Our guest speaker, Lorraine Harvey
(from Logos) uplifted our spirits with an inspiring speech which
began by reminding us that although there are many things
currently happening in the world over which we have very little
control, there are things every one of us can do to brighten and
lighten someone’s heart every single day through “Random Acts of
Kindness” As Lorraine says, “What have you got to lose?”
In his Evaluation, Don Ekroth was
so right when he stated how difficult it can be “…to get an
audience emotionally involved in what you are saying; to truly
connect.
Lorraine did this so effectively
that she was able to carry us all the way from empathy to
ecstasy”.
We had asked the Logos Toastmasters
to provide some of the Evaluators for this joint meeting because
we always appreciate hearing how we are doing through the
experienced eyes of people who aren’t familiar with us. Mary
Charleson (from Logos) gave us the General Evaluation of the
meeting. Although most Toastmasters meetings are run on the
same basic guidelines, over the years each individual club
evolves by adapting some of these to suit their own personality
and needs. Through Mary’s acknowledgement of this, both clubs
learned of some tips we could choose to apply which could help
to make good clubs even better. One key thing many of us picked
up from Mary’s evaluation was the practical way in which the
evaluation itself was constructed, and hope to put that into
practice when we next general evaluate!
A Big Thank You to Logos
Toastmasters Club for joining us for an evening of Fun and
Friendship
NEXT MEETING:
Monday February 14th
Join us for Valentine Fun & Chivalry
Club 1085
