Maxim
“The most important kind of learning (is that) in which quantity changes to a new quality … not the mere accumulation of knowledge, useful as this may be.” Moshe Feldenkrais
Attendance
Christmas seems to have come early, with 15 members and 11 guests. 3 of our guests completed their membership forms and handed them in to our Membership Secretary Isabelle.
Communication
Meetings with such a size always have high energy, and this lends energy to excellence, as we run through the parts of the meeting.
When three scheduled speakers dropped out in the last week, two in the last 24 hours, our two speakers tonight signed up and prepared their speeches in the 24 hours preceding the meeting. It says a lot about our developing skills, and our courage, to be able to do that. Well done Asli and Ranja.
Asli spoke from the advanced Persuasive Speaking manual, whilst Ranja also gave an advanced speech, from The Folk Tale manual.
Evaluations help our speakers improve, and let a person improve their own analysis, preparation and delivery techniques in giving feedback. Our evaluators were David, giving his first ever club evaluation, and Iris.
Impromptu speaking, Table Topics, was run by Geoffrey, who gave the four volunteers physical objects, about which to speak for up to two minutes.
Ben shared his knowledge with the audience on the subject of Mentoring and Coaching, in the “180 seconds” workshop.
Organisation
Olaf, who ran our meeting as Toastmaster of the Evening, led a high quality meeting. He dealt with issues flawlessly and invisibly. He deserves a lot of praise for the smooth competence he demonstrated.
Nevertheless, our general evaluation helps us take the good parts of the meeting, and make them better.
Points included:
Late cancellations of planned speeches places a burden on the organiser (TME). Please honour your commitment, and if you need to drop out, find a replacement speaker for yourself as the first attempted action.
180 seconds on a business topic – don’t expect enthusiasm to be enough to win hearts, but end this type of short speech with a call to action or persuasion.
Purchase a device for hanging our banner more elegantly than ‘on the coat rack’.
A 10 minute networking break was a great opportunity to get to know people and meet new guests and established members.
Add the Timer roll to the agenda.
Club News
Contests, 16th March.
Send the VP Education, Ben, a message, to be a contestant. Send Contest Chair, Barbara, a message, to be a judge, counter, timer, sergeant at arms.
Three new members submitted their forms: Welcome to Anna, Dmitri, and Klaus.
Upcoming meetings
2nd March – TME Barbara
16th March – club competitions (International speech contest, Evaluation contest)
30th March – extra club meeting to replace the ‘missing’ meetings of 16th March & 6th April
6th April – Area contest – Saalbau Gallus
23d April – Division contest – Karlsruhue
13-15 May – District contest, Timisoara, Roumania
Leave a Reply