While there are many milestones on our Toastmasters Journey, for me there are three that stand out: The first meeting role, the first speech, and the first time you act as the Toastmaster of a meeting.
With half the members away enjoying their holidays, and with last minute changes our agenda was left with a few gaps. In her first meeting out clubs newest member Judith, stepped up to the task and took on the role of Grammarian, added a dash of ah-counter and performed marvellously in the role.
Our club Treasurer, John grasped the "hot potato" that is the role of the Toastmaster for the first time, taking us smoothly through the odd pothole in the Agenda, with calm assurance. Toastmaster is one of those roles that I avoided like the plague, but after doing it 3 or 4 times, it really helped to boost my confidence as a speaker. I'm sure John will be back in the role again shortly.
While we had no icebreaker speeches, we had 4 excellent guests who made their first speeches in the club during Table Topics. Our Topic Master Manoj, lined up some great questions and our guests grabbed the opportunity, and gave us enthusiastic and eloquent responses.
We had Ajit Kulkarni (Citi Criers) and Chris Sarfo (Stratford Toastmasters), helping us to evaluate Table Topics and GE, and providing the insight which comes from seeing the club with "fresh eyes". One of the many benefits of Toastmasters is the opportunity to visit other clubs in the area, and meet other people who are on the same journey as ourselves, and I would encourage everyone to take advantage of this.
The highlight of the evening, apart from my excellent speech on saving money with Linux, was seeing Philip jump off the stage during his speech encouraging us to use Toastmasterclub.org (the club admin system previously know as D71). He had obviously been inspired by the new celebrity gymnastics show on BBC1, and has set the bar in terms of what we can expect in showmanship during our meetings. Can't wait to see cartwheels and somersaults from Richard Green in the next meeting.
See you on September 3rd!
Jason
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