We were in safe hands on Wednesday with Sola standing in for our President, Corinne and were led with great aplomb through the agenda by our Toastmaster of the evening Gwendoline.
The evening started with a fantastic table topics session which was introduced by Liz, our Table Topics Master. The theme for this impromptu speaking session was 'Telling a Story'. Liz gave each participant an opening line setting the scene for a mini tale. The challenge for the speakers was to speak for less than two minutes on the topics started by Liz and include a 'beginning', 'middle' and 'end'. Richard successfully gained the Best Table Topics award on this occasion with his description of rescuing a son from the side of the M25!
Our longer speeches were given by Gwendoline and Laurence. Gwendoline speech was all about leadership, using the Toastmasters Leadership Team roles as examples. She eloquently outlined the characteristics of good team leaders and the benefits of working as part of a team. Laurence's speech, his 3rd from the Competent Communicators Manual, was an interesting insight into Open Source Software and how collaboration across the world from thousands of participants on the development of valuable software is an example of the power of working as a team, despite the fact that the majority never even meet.
We were then treated to a number of evaluations: Judy praised the Table Topic speakers using her usual dose of good humour; Amanda was looking for the word of the day - Smash - and the use of other onomatopoeic words as well as good use of English; Tom was our Ah Counter; Paul and Stuart gave accomplished evaluations of the main speeches with their characteristic wit; Rashmi had the task of reporting on timings and keeping us on track; finally, our Richard our General Evaluator presented an overview of the evening ending with an upbeat critique.
