Wednesday, 8 April 2020

April Fools' Day - excellent time for Toastmasters online!

The second online Galway Toastmasters meeting was a roaring success thanks to the lessons learned from the first Online Meeting, a week previous! The committee introduced a new role entitled ‘Meeting Housekeeper’ whose job is to ‘explain best practice etiquette for online video conferencing meetings’. Christoffer, acting as time keeper, replaced the traditional coloured lights with appropriately coloured fruits; a green avocado, a yellow banana and a big red apple! The Grammarian, Aisling C, came up with “Babblement” as the word of the day!

More 60 Babblement Synonyms. Similar words for Babblement.




April Fools Day Word And Crown Cartoon Vector Illustration Stock ...Margaret L. as Toastmaster introduced Marie who ran the topics session. Appropriately the first question was, ‘what was the best April fools’ prank you pulled on someone?’. Surprisingly, most of the audience were reluctant to share their experience with us. I wonder why.
The first prepared speech was given by Martin, who works as a teacher, and it was on the subject of deficiencies within the education system. Using various research studies, he showed that Divergent Thinking was present in high levels in young children, which then proportionately declined according to the distance traveled along their educational path.

Unusually, there were two Icebreaker speeches in one meeting! These are the first speeches given by new members with the purpose of introducing themselves to the club membership. Danny gave us the first speech and told us that his honeymoon was spent in Germany and it led to his lifelong love of the people. His new found fondness led him to encourage his fellow townspeople of Clonakilty, Co. Cork to twin with the Bavarian town of Waldaschaff, Germany.

Clonakilty Town Twinning Association

Rob gave the second Icebreaker speech which told stories of his travels around the world which had many highlights including a visit to the Galapagos Islands, then on to travel through the countries of South America and South East Asia.

How standing like Wonder Woman can boost your confidenceAisling N introduced us all to ‘power poses’. Despite what you may think, it was not a lesson in how to be a good poseur, but how to effectively use certain body poses to inspire confidence in both the speaker and the audience.

Marie chaired the second half of the meeting and as general evaluator was pleased with the way the meeting ran. Join us online for the next meeting!

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