Another well-organised and delivered session on Monday 8^th August.

Our Toastmaster for the evening Maria was clear and confident hosting the meeting and gave us a treat with her knowledge and expertise of Toastmaster International. The theme for the evening was Excellence and Maria made sure this was woven throughout the meeting. 

We had 2 prepared speeches for the evening Donald with a speech entitled “How meeting Muhammed Ali changed my life” and Steven with a speech entitled “The good, the bad, the ugly”. Both speeches used personal experiences to strengthen their speech. We learned more about Donald and his journey in his speech and Steven reflected on mentoring.

Val and Jean were speech evaluators for the evening and it was great to see 2 experience toastmasters deliver their evaluations. 
Elizabeth gave us a fantastic education session on how to set up zoom for our hybrid sessions. She is confident with ICT and it was very kind of her to share her knowledge and expertise with us to make sure we run high-quality hybrid sessions at Doncaster Speakers. It’s a huge advantage at Doncaster Speakers that every session we can join face to face or on zoom. 
Tabletopics was run by Andy this evening, this was all about storytelling. The weirder and more wonderful the stories the better they were! We had a lot of fun with the session and Stephanie evaluated this session making sure everyone got quality feedback for their speeches. 

Attending the meeting were two special guests from our sister club in Sheffield, they were both made to feel welcome.
The evening was rounded off by our President Steven and we had 3 worthy winners.Best Speaker- StevenBest Tabletopics- ArthurBest Evaluator- Lianna 

Written by our General Evaluator for the night Lianna

Please also check out our facebook page for up to date news and picture of our winner.

25th July 2022

What a meeting, the room was full to capacity and we needed to find more chairs, we had the official handover of the Presidents chain,  2 experienced speakers go head to head and a number of first timers who took on roles that they had never done before in our club.

Elizabeth after the handover of the Presidents Chain with our New President Steven Bisby:

The people taking roles for the first time were:

• Donald’s first time as Toastmaster ran the meeting with passion and enthusiasm
• Stephen ran the Table Topics impromptu session with a novel and interesting choice of question, asking us to tell a story from 2 random words that he has chosen
• Macaulay not only did timer for the first time, but also ran it online.
• Sajeel, a transfer member from another club, provided the Table Topics Evaluation with some insightful feedback to all participants.

On top of all of those, we have two potential new members come along to see how it worked, one of which took part in our Table topics and received his first timer ribbon from Steve.

The meeting theme was “Be phenomenal or be 4gotten”, a passionate theme from our Toastmaster Donald.  He encouraged us all to be more than average and be memorable.  As theme’s go, it was perfectly in line with everyone at Toastmasters as we all strive to be more.

Our Education slot was by Stephanie, our VP Education entitled “So, what happens now” an encouraging talk on Pathways and motivating people to take the next steps on Toastmasters education challenge to every member.

The two experienced speakers were: 

Andy with a title “Still learning”, about his journey and importance of body language in speeches

And

Maria with a title “9 months of service” about her time in Toastmasters and the roles that she has taken on recently.

The winner of best speech was Andy:

On the table topics we had joint winners with Elizabeth in the room, and Val on line, giving Steve the issue of presenting the ribbons to both of them at the same time:

Last but certainly not least, we had the best evaluator, won by our General Evaluator  -Thashini with her excellent feedback to everyone who had not been evaluated already.

Overall a good meeting, with lots of people trying things for the first time and a lot to take away.

Next meeting is on Monday 8th August at 18:45 for 19:00 prompt start.

Meeting Theme – New Year in July

Monday 11th July 2022

Our Toastmaster year starts in July, and traditionally the incoming president takes the helm to set out their vision of the year.  

Steve has big shoes to fill, replacing Elizabeth, our outgoing President.  Steve started by thanking Elizabeth for her 2 years in charge, especially as that covered extraordinary times battling Covid and keeping the club going.

He then shared with us his vision for the coming year that was well received.

It is safe to say that the technology was not on our side at this meeting but Donald and Stephanie made it work the best it could be on the night.  That said, a meeting is never about the tech, it is always about the people.  Steve as TM, helmed a great fun, informative meeting that kicks off the year well.

We had another good omen for the future, Donald brought along a first timer Carrie, who I will talk about in a bit.

3 great speeches on the night, with a mix of experience.  

Stephen delivered a very good Ice Breaker entitled “Avoid at all cost”.  It was funny, well organised and there is no way I would have known it was his first speech if I had just walked in and listened to it.

Macaulay is turning into a great storyteller with a speech entitled “Monster Mac”, the speech lived up to its imaginative title and Macaulay definitely brought the speech to life.

Donald’s speech (It’s time to rumble) was about how he met Muhammad Ali, and the effect that it had on his life.  He delivered it with his energetic and enthusiastic style while also making us understand the once in a lifetime experience.

Of course, each speech had brilliant evaluations which included commendations and recommendations to make the next talks even better.

Donald won the vote for best speaker

Next we had a short Ed slot on “Why I want recommends!”.  In life it is easy to give positive feedback, but in TM, we also give recommendations.  Andy’s Ed slot concentrated on the importance of giving balanced feedback, not just the positives.  

Table Topics was run online by Lianna, and was a balanced and fun challenge for those who took part.

The 2 winners were polar ends of the Toastmaster Journey.  We had Carrie on her first ever meeting along with our most experienced member Andrew Miller.  

Carrie also picked up the First Time speaker ribbon for taking the stage for the first time. It can be nerve wracking coming to a club for the first time and speaking, and Carrie dived straight in, I am sure with the support and encouragement of Donald who bought her to our club.

The Evaluation contest was won by Andy for this Table Topics Evaluation.  After the meeting Andy was heard to say that when the quality of the question (by Lianna) and the contests is so good, it is an easier job than normal to do TT Eval.

The other roles for the night were:

Stephanie  – Timekeeper and Speech Evaluator

Val – Ah Counter

Arthur – Grammarian and Speech Evaluator

Andrew – Speech Evaluator

Donald – General Evaluator and  Zoom Master

In summary, a good start to the year, a few lessons to be learnt about the tech side and already a very promising first time appearance by Carrie.  I am looking forward to another good year in our club.