Paul our president opened the meeting punctually at 8.30pm. He welcomed members and guests to the venue , he also read the club mission of Toastmasters, which is to provide a supportive and positive learning experience in which members are empowered to develop communication and leadership skills. Paul mentioned that he was recently at a TM meeting in Belfast which he really enjoyed.
He introduced Mike, a very experienced Toastmaster who lead the meeting throughout the evening. Mike announced the officers for the evening. Doireann was the “ah” counter, Katherine was the grammarian and introduced the word “ prodigious” which means remarkably or impressively great in extent, size or degree. It was put to good use by all attendees of the meeting. Jenny was our time keeper and explained the different colours for the speeches and topics session. Sarah had a poem prepared for the creative corner and kept the audience in suspense until the second part of the meeting. Mary was the Sergeant at arms, the person at the door who takes the money and has the name badges. Margaret had the job as general evaluator to access the overall meeting at the end.
Mike introduced Martin, who was topics master. He had a wonderful and varied amount of topics ranging from the coming heatwave (yes, please), Noah’s Ark to the state of New Years resolutions in March. He received many add-ons which is a good sign.
The formal speeches started with Pat’s educational speech on Mentoring. He spoke about TM mission on mentoring by helping others and being a role model. For example he would contact Mike, who has a tremendous sense of humour, if he needed help preparing a light hearted speech. Pat will leave forms out during the break for mentors and mentees and Jenny will start to match them up.
The second speech was Ronan's ice breaker, which is the first project for a new member. It is a speech about your own life. Ronan started with the speech with the year he was born, the year the Berlin Wall came down – 1989. It was very interesting listening to him telling us where and what subjects he had studied. He spent time in Berlin, San Francisco and Colorado. He returned to Galway last year. He joined TM only 2 months ago. Well done Ronan.
Next up was Trevor, who did an amazing speech on “farm safety – highlighting slurry gas awareness”. The gas can kill instantly in 3 -5 seconds humans and animals alike. The gas is odourless and invisible. Preventative measures are gas detector fittings on overalls which will start flashing when levels are too high. He also spoke about the dangers of large farm equipment from hedge cutting trailers to crop sprayers.
The last formal speech was by Donal. Its title was “How to organise a speech in 15 minutes”. We were all glued to his lips hoping that this “magic recipe” would work for us. I would be flying through my speeches I thought. It seems easy enough. Donal was overrun by people asking to get a copy of his secret to speech writing. So much that Paul sent us the recipe today. Yippie. Thank you.
The evaluations of the speeches were completed by Liam, Frances, Paul and Anne.
Mike then called on the reports from the officers of the evening.
Margaret gave her overall evaluation of the meeting and Sarah completed the creative corner.
Mike handed the meeting back to Paul, our president, who thanked members and guests for coming.
Another interesting evening which I thoroughly enjoyed.
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