Meeting 1126 - "Trophies, Ribbons and Awards"

 

If a theme is introduced by music, entertainment will be in overabundance.

Leanne made sure we felt awarded the entire meeting with snippets of her achievements interlaced with human success.

Gokul called the meeting to order by welcoming our special visitor (his previous mentor) and disappointingly without a dad joke.

Paul opened the meeting with an excess of information of upcoming activities within Toastmasters. He then had the privilege to award achievement ribbons: Arun finished Level 4 in Dynamic Leadership, while John was presented with two ribbons: completing Level 3 in Visionary Communication and accomplishing Level 5 (the highest level and first for our club) in Presentation Mastery. 

Toastmaster Leanne didn't get us just clapping along to the selected music, but made sure we were aware of the deluge of encouragement in the song.

She called on Gail for the program changes which was only one change in presenters.

Jonathon reminded us in his toast to take the time to reflect and we toasted "To our success".

Gail gave us a plethora of synonyms for the word of the evening: plethora. She also gave us example sentences and the original meaning. It was used extremely well - with Trish emerging as the clear winner.

The Round Robin led by John gave us not only a chance to speak of our superabundance of our triumphs, but also to show off one trophy, ribbon or award. It was so encouraging to see the surplusage of talent in our club.

Next, it was time for our prepared speeches:

1. Christiane spoke about her plentiful encounters with mentors in her speech titled "Expect the Unexpected" (Engaging Humour path, Level 2, project 3: Introduction to Toastmasters Mentoring) Liz gave her stratospheric feedback in the evaluation.
   
2. Tony utilised technology with "Are We Ready?" (Effective Coaching, Level 2, project 1: Understanding your Communication Style) to demonstrate the AI revolution we are in the middle of. It was evaluated by Marlene with chockablock admiration of technology.
   
3. Trish provided us with a handout to demonstrate her surplus on activity on websites in her speech "Your brand in social media" (Visionary Communication, Level 4, elective project: Building a Social Media Presence). Helen evaluated the glut on social media presence of Trish.

It was time to call on our heart strings to get ample tickets sold (and Jonathon did this very well). He gave us two categories we would fall into: rewarding ourselves for achievements or commemorating our "significant other" for still being with us.

Arun was called on to give us the timers report for the first half where he told us about our exorbitant use of time.

During the supper break, we were able to buy raffle tickets, indulge the goodies provided by Helen and Chris as well as catch up on the immeasurable news of the fortnight.

The second half of our meeting started with Table Topics (those impromptu speeches). Rosie had selected boundless topics related to the theme (acceptance speeches) and called on:

1. Narelle - Give a mini-educational on how NOT to win the Table Topics ribbon: ask for the question halfway through your mini speech; make a conclusion, but then keep going; admit to cheating by utilising ChatCPG incorporated within glasses
   
2. Chris - Mr Sandgate of the year: high rises for Sandgate
   
3. John - Safe driver award: always looking out for the police and break hard
   
4. Paul - Life as the Table Topics trophy: biggest wish is to go home with the winner for 2 weeks
   
5. Darryl - Symbols of achievement: a statue for his trophy wife

The Table Topics were evaluated by Trevor and Gokul who both weren't lacking praise as well as points of improvement suggestions.

While our Sergeant at Arms Gokul collected the votes, Leanne shared extravagent triumphs of humanity.

Afterwards, we had the treat of listening to Darryl who asked our club to be a sounding board of his humorous speech he will enter into at the District Level. Paul led the group evaluation.

Then Dan presented his take on his role as Vice President Membership, followed by Chris presenting on the benefits of being Secretary. You will hold the key to ... (the name tags).

It was Dan's turn again: This time to give us feedback as the general evaluator.

Raffle master Jonathon asked visitor Darryl to draw the lucky winner (Gokul). The question if Gokul chose category one (himself) or two (his wife) will need to be established at the next meeting.

 

In closing, Paul reminded us of the District Conference starting 28 April as well as the club officer election at our next meeting (and nominations needing to be made prior).

He then presented the awards to:

Best Speech - Trish

Best Evaluation - Helen

Best Table Topic - John & Narelle

Most Improved - Helen

 

Sandgate Toastmasters will meet again on 9 May. (There will be no meeting on 25 April.)