Meeting 1038 "Australian Heroes"

Due to Christiane's absence Gail got to get some practice in the Presidents role, opening the meeting and introducing two guests for the evening Andrea and Jakob.

John S, the founding member of Sandgate Toastmasters was presented with an award for 45 years membership at Sandgate Toastmasters. He said he being 85 years old he had been a member for more than half his life and was looking forward to his 90th birthday when he would receive his award for 50 years membership.

Marlene, a treasured member of the club received an award for 25 years as a member of Sandgate Toastmasters.

Gail then handed over control to Monica who was the Toastmaster for the evening.
















Annette lead the Toast for the evening and reflected on the unsung heroes of our nation. Particularly those working in community services such as fireman, teachers and nurses. Then toasted "To all Australian Heroes."

Marlene plucked out the word for the evening "Pluck or Plucky" as a term that has many meanings including spirited and determined courage, which was fitting for the evening.
Unfortunately Marlene wearing many hats for the evening forgot all about the word after sticking it up on the lectern and the audience never found out who was the one who said the word the most throughout the evening. However Marlene's many years as a Toastmaster shone through when she elegantly declared "to the person in the audience who used the word the most, you know who you are, so congratulations, unfortunately I do not who you are."

Darryl led the Round Robin, helping all the members and guests warm up for the evening my discussing some one they believe is a Villain and Hero or both.
Ancestors and community workers featured highly during the Round Robin.

Speeches

Leanne was up for the first speech of the evening and entertained the audience with her speech entitled "The Secret Recipe." The audience was taken down the cheesecake making options, beginning with the packet mix, then the no bake recipe and ending with the holy grail... The New York baked cheese cake. She even brought the New York baked cheese cake for the supper... An excellent way to sweeten the audience when it came to voting!

Gail presented the second speech for the evening entitled "My leadership Journey" which took us on the journey of her experience learning to become a teacher and evolving her leadership skills to keep up with the times. Gail explained how she was forced to accept the Bureaucratic style of the leadership when she began in the 70's to deal with large wedged in class rooms, then tried on the Innovative leadership style when she returned to work in the 80's and eventually ended with her natural style of leadership in the 2000's with the Democratic style of leadership, which she hopes will be the way forward for teachers now and into the future. It sounds like her students were very lucky to be lead by a forward thinker!

Chris, a fire fighter, gave the final speech for the evening entitled "The Brief Debrief." Chris used visual aids to illustrate how he uses a timeline in conjunction with a map of an area to be able to quickly go through a scenario with his team and analyse how well they did dealing with the job at hand. Chris showed excellent knowledge of the topic and we all felt relieved in the knowledge that he would be leading teams to protect the community.

This was the final speech for Chris as part of the Competent Communicator manual... Yay!!!

Speeches were evaluated by John. T, Marlene and Eileen respectively.

Casey presented the raffle, which included some culinary Australian Heroes as well as a little book about Ned Kelly, the classic Australian Hero who was also a Villain.












Annette was thrown many curve balls throughout the evening with the first being the realisation that the batteries in the light machine had finally gone on the blink. Thankfully members of the audience came to her rescue and helped Annette out with different coloured card to use as an alternative. Toastmasters had to use their imagination and imagine the colour blue was green and the pink was red. It would seem to colour pink wasn't as effective as a red light as it did seem to get ignored from time to time.

Table Topics

Table Topics was hosted by Casey. In keeping with the theme participants were asked to questions about Australian heroes, the Underdog and why are we often looking overseas for heroes. 

Unsuspecting participants included Darryl, John. S, Paul, Stephen and heroic guetsts Jakob & Andrea.  

Table Topics were evaluated by Blake and Carmy, who provided the audience with some handy hints and encouragement when doing Table Topics. 

Educational

John then led an Educational mock meeting where he asked the quorum to debate the following non-binding motion, "that male members of Sandgate Toastmasters be required to wear a business shirt, tie, trousers and enclosed footwear to our meetings."

Annette was again thrown into the deep end when John asked her to chair the meeting. Here we learnt that "man" in the term Chairman comes from the Latin for "hand" and thus is not sexist. 

Speaking of sexist the debate highlighted many differing opinions regarding the motion, it was suggested amending the motion to add "and women" which was out voted with the main argument being that women already do enough in there day to require the added pressure of dressing in a business suit to attend a meeting. 

With the amendment voted down a vote was put out for the original motion which was also voted down with a large proportion of the quorum voting against it. 

Equality was the winner of the day!!!

As is often the case (even in a mock meeting... apparently) the meeting went over time by 8 minutes. 

Grammarian 

Paul was the Grammarian of the evening and made a point of the effectiveness of word pictures in captivating an audience, even if the audience wish they could erase the picture from their minds, such as Darryl's word picture of "seeing Kieren Perkins in his budgie smugglers hurdling over the starting blocks to give his then wife a hug." 

That probably goes for any sentence that includes the words "budgie smuggler."

General Evaluation

As General Evaluator, Leesa gave a sum up of the meeting and suggested in the future we have coloured card in the timers box to ensure we have a back up in case we have another malfunction with the timers lights. With Paul on the case to sort out the machine, this is unlikely to be needed but its always a good idea to have a back up anyway.

Awards!!!

Best Speech - Leanne

Best Evaluation - John

Best Table Topic - Darryl

Most Improved - Chris

Annette was the lucky winner of the raffle!

Look forward to seeing you all at the next meeting on the 11th of June.

Treasurer Blake will be accepting payment next meeting from those who will be attending the Change Over Dinner on the 28th June.

Meeting 1037 "Numbers"

Christiane opened the meeting and introduced two guests; her husband Shane and Houng who had found the club online the same day that she attended.

Christiane handed control over to Darryl who was Toastmaster of the evening and as you will see throughout the Blog he was a lot more than that...

Darryl dressed very dapper for the evening and while his fellow toastmasters just thought he was taking his role very seriously, we later found out that he was dressed in his best because with Leanne being away and the washing piling up Darryl only had his best left to wear (someone might have to do an educational on washing and ironing at another meeting).

With Mothers Day having only just passed Carmy gave a toast "To Mums"



Using numbers as his theme Stephen used the word "Estimation" as the word for the meeting. According to estimates it was not used as much as estimated.

Skye led the Round Robin and in keeping with the theme, highlighted the importance of age as a number and asked her fellow toastmasters to tell us about a favourite birthday memory. Surprise parties seemed to be some of the most memorable birthdays.

Stephen delivered the first speech of the evening. His goal was to persuade the audience to "See your doctor" and after educating his audience about Sleep Apnea and the severe impact it can have on one's life. Stephen's speech was evaluated by Blake who may have been persuaded to see the doctor after listening to the speech and realising that he might actually have Sleep Apnea too.

The 10th Speech

Christiane delivered her 10th Speech as part of the Confident Communicator Manual entitled "Scam."

Annette gave the evaluation for Christiane's speech and said she wasn't sure how a speech entitled Scam could be an inspirational speech but was blown away by Christiane's "unnerving speech" that inspired the audience to stand up against con men and put your family first. 

Christiane's speech was received with a standing ovation from the audience.  

Darryl came to the rescue and gave the third speech of the evening. Darryl inspired the audience with details of his experience at the District 69 Convention he attended the previous weekend. He expressed his disappointment about attending the convention for the first time without his mentor Annette. Darryl detailed the three key ingredients to get the most out of your Toastmasters experience:

1) Have fun (tick)

2) Come to meet your friends (tick)

3) To work hard at the craft and keep speaking (tick tick)

He also stipulated that you will not get fined or go to jail if you make a mistake at Toastmasters (Phew!)

Paul evaluated Darryl's speech and told the audience how he had been inspired to attend a convention in the future. 

The business meeting was postponed as a quorum was not present to continue with a meeting. 

Election of officers did go ahead and with a bit of encouragement all executive positions were filled as follows:

President - Gail

Vice President of Education - Stephen 

Vice President of Membership - Eileen

Vice President of Public Relations - Leesa 

Treasurer - Paul

Secretary - Casey

Sergeant at Arms - Darryl

Paul was Table Topics Master and keeping with the theme of the evening asked unsuspecting audience members to talk on topics like; Lucky numbers, number one food cuisine, holiday destination, movie, sport etc.

Table topics were evaluated by Casey and Leesa. 

Following on, Darryl stepped up to the lectern again and gave an Educational, encouraging his fellow Toastmasters to focus on their strengths as a way to captivate their audience and to make sure your audience can understand what it is you're talking to them about. He said "Keep talking and get feedback."

Carmy was Grammarian for the evening and kept tabs on all the um's and ah's throughout the evening... declaring Casey the winner of the most um's said during the evening!!!

Casey kept time for the evening and won the raffle!!! The raffle was kindly donated by Marlene and included a risque deck of cards. 

Eileen undertook the general evaluation for the evening. She commended Darryl as Toastmaster for helping create a fun meeting despite the small turn out. 

Winners are grinners!

Best Speech - Christiane

Best Evaluation - Annette 

Best Table Topic - Stephen 

Most Improved - Skye