Meeting Summary 4th February 2015

Participation

There is no slowing down of the interest and participation in our meetings, as shown my the presence of 13 members and 8 guests.  A special welcome was extended to our newest members, Geoffrey and Ivan H, by our VP Membership, Christoph.

This meeting was run in informal yet efficient way, providing once more a comfortable environment to practice and improve public speaking skills.

We enjoyed a full agenda, with 3 speeches.  Geoffrey and Jörg both gave their first, Ice Breaker, speeches, to introduce themselves to the club.  Olaf continued his succesful run of speeches, this time marrying leadership lessons with a business focus.

Oral and Written Evaluations were given by Barbara, and Esprit de Corps Toastmasters club members, Yani and Justin.

Karla managed Table Topics impromptu speaking.  She innovated by selecting 5 speakers in advance, including Bertalan, Carlos, Andre, Ivan, and Barbara.  The subjects were inspiring so as to be interesting and provocative, and broad so as to enable the speakers to develop the topics.

Asli presided for the second time as TME.  We always aim to learn and improve.  A number of points for improvement to work on for next time (summarized from our General Evaluation & other feedback) include:

Venue

• The room is very comfortable, business like and access is easy from the main station.
• With 21 seats, the room may become too small for our meetings.
• Is it possible to find a bar or restaurant close by for after-meeting networking?

Sergeant at Arms

• Name tags help guests recognise members and make them feel at ease.
• Evaluation slips were placed on the table.  Lets make this a permanent feature of our meetings: S@A can place them in advance on the tables,
• Electronic evaluation tools: the S@A wrote the speakers’ emails on the flip chart in advance, so evaluation could be given without interrupting the meeting.

• The TME can ask the timer to summarise speaking time after each speaking section.
• TME: allowing support roll holders to introduce their rolls is an option, which teaches members to express themselves concisely.  Useful for guests too.
• Table Topics Evaluation – either have a TT evaluator, or have the General Evaluator do it.
• All rolls on the agenda have a brief description, except Timer and General Evaluator. Should this change?
• more people should be General Evaluator – it’s not very popular, but we’re here to learn.
• The Grammarian did an excellent job finding phrases to work on and phrases that were excellent.
• All evaluations were well balanced.  Good standards are being achieved.

As TME, Asli will finalise attendance, rolls, and close out the meeting in Easy Speak.

UPCOMING EVENTS

The club level competition for the International Speech Contest & Evaluation Contest take place on Wednesday 18th March.  Contact Ben or Claire to be a contestant.

Winners will go on to compete at the following events:

• Area F4 contest -Saturday 18th April, Haus der Jugend, Deutscherrn Ufer 12, Frankfurt.
• Division F contest – Saturday 2nd May, Mannheim.
• District 95 Conference – Friday 21-Sunday 23 May, Boras, Sweden.
• International Convention, 12-15 August, Las Vegas,

MEMBERSHIP

Two new members were introduced to the club, Geoffrey and Ivan H.  This brings our registered membership to 25, and a growth of 5 since January 1st.

NEXT MEETINGS

18th February (TME roll still vacant.  Sign up please).

After the recent trial of several venues, the committee will make an assessment in time for our next meeting on 18th February.  Watch this space for confirmation of our next venue.

See you in two weeks!  Your club president,

Ben