The meeting was
opened by Martin, the President. He welcomed everyone before handing the meeting
over to our Toastmaster for the evening Declan.
He again welcomed people and explained the format of the meeting for members
and guests. He introduced the officers for the evening who each explained their
roles. The final officer introduced was Frances, the Topicsmaster. She asked
members questions that they hadn’t a chance to prepare but the topics were
straightforward enough that people could attempt to answer them. Some of the
topics were:
1. Ireland has a tradition of story telling do
you think that is being preserved today?
2. If you were promoting Ireland to a visitor
what would you tell them?
3. What is your favourite story in the past in
Ireland?
Following the topics
session we had our prepared speeches. Aisling was our first speaker. She spoke
from the Innovative Planning pathway. It was a level 2 speech entitled “The
Johari Window” She explained what the speech was about and was very
knowledgeable about the subject matter. Her speech was about how well do you
really know yourself. Do others know something about you, you don’t know?
The second speaker
was Eoin who gave a “Best mans speech” as practice for the real speech he is
due to give shortly. It was a Presentation Mastery pathway, Level 1 speech from
the Evaluation and Feedback project. It was a very reflective speech bringing
in thoughts, feelings and emotions. It was also very witty. As his best friend
is getting married this speech delves into Eoin’s past and how he was always
his friend's wing man.
Our final speaker
was Pat who also gave a speech entitled “Childhood’s End Rebooted” from the Innovative
Planning pathway. It was a level 1 speech from the Evaluation and Feedback project. The speech was about his past
life and the different jobs he held before he finally came to know what he was
happiest doing.
During our break the
evaluators spoke with the speakers to give them feedback on their speeches.
After the break Martin evaluated Aisling's speech. He highlighted how she kept
the audience engaged and used good hooks to keep them that way.
In evaluating Eoin’s
speech Martin also highlighted how he also kept the audience engaged. He used
humour, hand gestures and heartfelt expressions to create a wonderful speech.
The final evaluation
was Aisling’s of Pat’s speech. She spoke of his use of a timeline sequence that
moved through the parts of his past.
All of the
evaluators made a recommendation for the speakers to work on in their future
speeches.
After the
evaluations the Ah Counter, Declan, gave his report. He highlighted the use of
crutch words such as “ah” and “um” in people’s speeches. He also told us that
neither Pat nor Jenny used any filler words when they spoke, Congratulations to
them. We also heard about the use of our word of the day which was
“Propitious”. It was used five times during the evening.
Our General
Evaluator, Sarah who was visiting from the Loughrea club, then gave her
feedback on our overall meeting. She highlighted how well the meeting ran to
plan even though it was our first one back this year. After her report Eugene,
our Vice President of Education, asked for volunteers for role at our next
meeting and many of them were filled. He then handed back to our President,
Martin to close the meeting.
He thanked everyone
for attending and brought a very interesting and informative first meeting of
the year to a close.
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