8th June 2022

 

On a windy Irish summer evening, the toastmasters’ club members and guests gathered in Menlo Park Hotel, Galway, to have another engaging and thought-provoking fortnightly meeting. 

At the outset, our president Eugene joined us via zoom and opened the meeting. It was the last day before summer holiday, and also Eugene’s last day  as president.

Luke, as Toastmaster, ran the meeting and introduced the meeting role holders. Martin, Ah-counter, explained the role, and then, Ivica, Grammarian, introduced the word of the day: “Preposterous”, followed by further introductions: Timekeeper (Jenny); Creative Corner (Alison); Scribe (Niloufar); General evaluator (Eugene). Eugene briefly mentioned his aim to improve evaluation and to encourage members to evaluate and become a better evaluator.

Our Topics master (Avril), explained the Topics Session, and presented the topic. She presented spicy topics and encouraged the audience to participate. First topic was about Elon Musk: “Should Elon Musk pull out from Twitter?” and participants shared their opinions in this regard. Then Avril raised the second question: “Should Cannabis be made legal in Ireland”. In response to this question, participants argued around the effectiveness of such legalisation, morality and the lessons learned from illegality of cannabis in society. The third questions was about making money from gas and oil, which was related to the current economic and political crisis in the world. Thus, participants actively expressed their ideas on this.

While the first three questions covered economic and political issues, the last question was in a different theme. The last questions was: “Why is the sky blue?”. This questions was also eagerly answered by participants, and they mentioned to their assumptions such as the impacts of reflections of oceans, lights, etc.

Our first Speaker, an ice breaker, was Brian. He talked beautifully about dynamic leadership (as part of a project called “smelling flowers and shooting messengers) (level 1). He shared with us his beautiful experiences of his 7-month son and how he and his wife cooperate to manage this extraordinary and enjoyable experience, as parents. He mentioned to his beautiful diverse family which is combined of an Irish father and Colombian mother. Then he profoundly elaborated the importance of listening and communication, and paying attention to others.

The second speaker, Cormac, impressively talked about “Conflict Resolutions”. At the outset, he made the audience engaged through a quick activity which was really impactful. Then, he introduced three tips to resolve conflicts which he called PLT technique. Accordingly,

• P stands for Perspective about other person’s situation: Put yourself in their shoes, even if you are still angry.
• L stands for Love: self-love & love for others: take a deep breath, as breathing is a super power. ‘Everybody breathes, but not everyone knows how to breathe.’
• T stands for Talk: When arguing, you do not talk. You only repeat frustration.

Cormac excellently used elaboration techniques, and made the audience involved in his discussion, and gave us the impression that we learnt a beneficial tool for our daily life.

 Speaker 3 was Maire. She had a very interesting talk about ‘Cross cultural strategic relationships (Level 2). At the outset, she presented a very profound conceptual framework of culture backed by valid sources. She discussed on key concepts such as everyone’s unique cultural identity, different dimensions of identity and their impacts on every person’s culture, the impact of gender on cultural identity, stereotypes, and the impact of being in dynamic contexts which constantly change. She shared her invaluable experiences as a teacher involved in a project on “International Schools’ European Mothers” in Turkey. She also discussed different barriers in cultural bridging, such as language barriers, etc.

Following the break, the General evaluator, Eugene, opened and chaired the second part of the meeting. Our evaluators were Frances, Tomas, Aisling and they all gave insightful feedback. Positive points about the three speakers were: clear introduction about themselves, mentioning family background, no reliance on notes, clear title, confidence, clear voice, high level of engagement and interactive gestures, persuasive speech, and using a clear structure of speech. It was also advised to have a clear conclusion or a traditional end.

Alison completed a very interesting creative corner and presented a very beautiful poem. According to our Grammarian, the word of the day, Preposterous, was used 10 times during this session which is quite considerable.

At the end all officers provided their feedback based on their roles, and the meeting was wrapped up by Eugene. He highlighted the importance of audience who are participating on line and to make sure to include them.

The next meeting will take place on Wednesday the 22th of June at 8pm in the Menlo Park Hotel (Galway) which will be the last gathering before summer holiday.