Written by aseem kapoorClub President Croydon Communicators Our meeting was kicked off by Zoom Master and SAA for the meeting Luqman who ran us through the house rules and Zoom functionality. Afia our Toastmaster for the evening introduced 'new beginnings and spring time' as the theme for the meeting before inviting Timekeeper Troy to explain his role, and then Grammarian Aminat to reveal the word-of-the day 'collywobbles'! Sandra ran our warm-up session challenging us to give a greeting or say a phrase in another language or dialect. The club responded with words in Spanish, Hungarian, Twi, Swazi, Creole, French, Yuraba, Swahili, and Jamaican! Gina, Susan and Aseem were up to deliver prepared speeches based on projects from the Pathways educational programme. Gina's speech was a wonderful celebration of her father's 100th birthday and shared his wisdom 'nothing beats a failure but a try'!
Susan our second speaker told us of the importance of the power of listening, and talked about stress, crying and laughter. Finally, our third speaker Aseem shared his experiences of being a protégé/mentee in his speech about mentoring. To evaluate our speakers we had Sean Dean (visiting Toastmaster and Immediate Past President at Society Speakers), Norma, and Matt all providing insightful feedback for the benefit of the speakers and audience. In the second half of the meeting Dan ran an innovative and fun Table Topics session asking us all to be news reporters, giving each speaker a 'story' and then prompting them with random keywords to try and incorporate into their story on the fly. Grammarian Aminat reported on the language used throughout the meeting and especially the word of the day 'collywobbles' which many had managed to use, our Toastmaster Afia an impressive nine times! Florence our VPPR recently delivered a motivational 75 minute seminar to 30 women and told us all about this amazing success story. Congratulations to Florence, such a wonderful testimonial of how Toastmasters has helped one of our members to go away and excel! We received some lovely comments and feedback on the meeting from our wonderful guests Rupa and Sherelle, and from visiting Toastmasters Sean and Sara. Finally onto the awards and club business. Norma was recognised for completing Level 2 of the Innovative Planning path. Gina won both Best Table Topic and Best Speaker. Matt was voted best evaluator and Luqman picked up the President's Award for a flawless job as first time Zoom Master!
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WRITTEN BY Aseem kapoorClub President Croydon Communicators Another club contest night at Croydon Communicators, and I'm probably not alone in hoping this is the last one we are forced to hold online! Unfortunately, Toastmasters online contest rules require audience cameras to be switched off, so we have the bizarre scenario of contestants having to deliver their speeches into a void. Despite this, we were treated to the usual exceptional standard of speeches and evaluations from our members. Norma Powell, our VP of Membership did a tremendous job as Contest Chair, supported by our equally fantastic VP of Education Aminat Omotosho taking on the Chief Judge duties. International Speech Contest Daniel Magill - Cameras Off Florence Nakkozi - You Are The Next History Maker Matt Clark - Finding Flow Following the speeches, Aminat and her team of anonymous voting judges, and ballot counters Lydia and Christina, moved to their break-out room to calculate the results. Meanwhile in the main room Norma interviewed our speakers! Following a break in proceedings for everyone to grab some refreshments the second contest of the evening was introduced by Norma. Evaluation Speech Contest Luqman Dawud Daniel Magill Paul Imm Loreen McIntosh Well done to all our members who competed and congratulations to the winners who will be invited to represent the club at the Area H15 contest on Saturday 6th March!
International Speech Contest Results: First Place: Dan Magill Second Place: Matt Clark Third Place: Florence Nakkozi Evaluation Speech Contest Results: First Place: Paul Imm Second Place: Dan Magill Third Place: Loreen McIntosh We do have trophies for Dan and Paul, currently in the possession of last year's winners - will get these handed over, engraved and presented as soon as we're back to in-person meetings! Finally, a big thank you to everyone who helped organise the event and took on a functionary role. written by florence nakkoziVP Public Relations Croydon Communicators We had the honour of having DTM Lynne Cantor, the UK & Ireland Evaluation Champion in 2012. She presented an interactive evaluation workshop in which she shared nuggets on how we can become effective evaluators.
She reminded us of the following basic things that the evaluator needs to do;
Lynne explained the details of the Ins and outs of an effective evaluator. She engaged the members by asking questions and providing evaluation exercises throughout the workshop. We had one speaker for the evening, Florence Nakkozi with a speech title "Use crisis to your advantage". As a way of testing the knowledge we had acquired from the workshop, Lynne asked 2 members to volunteer and evaluate the speech plus 2 other members to provide feedback to the evaluators. The workshop was comprehensive and productive. Big thank you to Lynne! |
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