Galway Toastmasters – 3rd September 2025 – Breaking the Ice, a medical device and what coaching is (and isn’t)

Galway Toastmasters held its first meeting following the summer in SCCUL Enterprise Centre at 8.00PM. September is always an exciting month in a club as members return from holidays and meet up not just to learn public speaking and leadership skills but also to swap stories of their summer.

Our meeting was opened by our President, Warren, in his usual warm and welcoming style. He quickly introduced Martin as our Toastmaster for the evening. Martin was double jobbing as the General Evaluator at this meeting which meant he would host the first and second half of the meetings. This was how Galway Toastmasters traditionally ran meetings up to about 5 years ago with one person running the meeting. IN more recent years that has been split between the Toastmaster and General Evaluator roles to allow more members the experience of helping to guide our meetings.

Martin introduced our officers for the meeting. Ciaran, Maud and Niamh took on the Ah-counter, Grammarian and Timekeeper roles respectively. Both Ciaran and Niamh as relatively new members so it was wonderful to see them getting involved so quickly. Niamh also took on the role of Creative Corner for the evening. Each of them introduced their role to the audience to benefit particularly guests and newer members. Martin then introduced Jekin who gave us a wide ranging and accessible range of unprepared Topics that members responded to. This really helps members develop on the spot thinking and is a wonderful part of our meetings.

Next came the prepared speeches. First Ian gave us his Icebreaker speech, the first prepared speech a member gives to the club. These speeches are always very interesting as they give us a sense of our, generally newer members.  This was followed by Pat’s speech “Galway's Medical Device Industry” which a fascinating insight into the impact that medical device companies have on Galway and on patients around the world. Pat had obviously put time and effort into researching what was an excellent, entertaining and educational speech. Finally, Kathy spoke on the theme of “The Coaching Experience - what it is and what it definitely isn't”. As an experienced Life Coach was able to set out what coaching is designed to do and what it isn’t. It was a well prepared, interesting and informative speech. We then had our break for tea, biscuits and a chat.

Following the break, Martin welcomed us back and introduced the evaluators for the three speeches before the break. Frances, Warren and Connie evaluated Ian, Pat and Kathy’s speeches from the first half. They all praised the positives that they found in the speeches and made one or two suggestions in each case where they felt slight changes may help the impact of the speech. Importantly, these suggestions are never delivered as criticisms but rather challenges to all of us to help us improve, try a different speaking technique or style. Perhaps more importantly, they highlight members support of each other and faith in our ability to grow, adapt and thrive.

Martin then introduced the officers who had to report back, namely the Ah-Counter and Grammarian. Once again, these roles make us aware both of areas that we might want to work on but also the wonderful language and imagery created in every meeting by the words and phrases members use. This was followed by Niamh’s wonderful creative corner.

The General Evaluator then evaluated the speech evaluators and the over all meeting before Martin filled as many roles as possible for the next meeting on 17^th September before handing back to Warren, our club President who closed the meeting. It was a wonderful, enjoyable meeting.