Our first meeting of March was opened by our Sergeant at Arms, Neil Pettigrew, who then handed over to our President, Paul Andreas.
Paul reported on the very successful Speakathon of the previous week, when six of our newest members were able to give speeches. Carrie, Alexanderz, John, Juan and Daniel gave their Icebreaker speeches and Oscar presented Speech # 5, an interesting story about the scientist, Nikola Tesla. The standard was high and the stories were interesting and entertaining.
Then Richard M announced the creation of a new committee, “The Nominations Committee”, and encouraged members to join it. Its role will be to oversee the election of the new Club Committee, which will take place during the first meeting of May. At the meeting prior to that, on 20 April, The Nominations Committee” will make a report of any nominations received.
Our VPM, John, then encouraged us to stand for the Club Committee and especially to stand for his role of VPM, which he then went on to describe.
Our Toastmaster for the evening was Riyah, who introduced her team to us comprised of Timekeeper – Alain; Ah Counter – Martin Langdon; Grammarian – Christine; Warm up – Annelise; Hot Tip – Martin Austin.
Annelise led the Warmup by asking members to share what things they did to keep fit, which got some interesting replies. For example, Richard G said that he raised weights whilst Susan said that she raised glasses.
Our first speech was by Jennifer A, with Speech # 4 from the CC Manual, titled “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained”. She described her adventurous daughter, Ruth’s attempts to ski for the first time in the Swiss Alps, which resulted in a sore bottom and nearly getting marooned at the top of a mountain.
Our second speech was by Neil with a speech called “The Poor Relation”, which exhorted us to complete our “Competent Leader Manual” and gave us some compelling reasons why we should.
The third speech was by Richard M with Speech # 4 from the CC Manual called, “Choose Love Over Comfort”.
The three speeches were then ably evaluated by John C, David H and Richard G respectively.
After the break Simon led the Table Topics with some interesting questions about taboo subjects, which provided quite a challenge to answer. Our TT Speakers were up to the challenge and gave some excellent answers
Then onto the Awards. Alexanderz won the Table Topics award, Richard G won the Best Evaluation Award for his evaluation of Richard M’s speech and Richard M won the Best Speaker Award.
Dave Henson then reminded everyone about our Club Contest, which will be held at our next meeting on 16 March and announced that we still have slots for speakers and evaluators.
Paul A then drew the meeting to a close.
A big thank you to all those who took on roles and gave speeches and helped to make the evening a great success. A visitor from another club told me afterwards that she thought the standard of all our speakers was very high!
Next Meeting
Our next meeting will be held on Thursday 16 March, which will be our contest.
Paul Andreas, President, Bromley Speakers