Update from the 21st of April. With our President Xavi away on business travel, and VPE Melinda arriving a little late, it would fall officially on our lovely Marie to be the "Acting President" and open the meeting. However, I sneaked in and told Dima (Sergeant at Arms) to hand over the meeting intro to myself instead. There was a good reason for that: Marie had not so recently completed her first 10 speeches with Prestigious Speakers, and I had more recently received her Badge from TMi. So I used the first few minutes of the meeting to call her up on stage, congratulate her and present her with the CC award badge. Judging by the applause, I think everyone liked it.
Our Madam Toastmaster Brenda presented "Accomplish" as the word of the day, and Angela - jumping in as General Evaluator - did a great job presenting her role and her team: Dima as Timer and Rosy as Ah-Counter.
Next up were Tulia's creative Table Topics, where she challenged Cristian, Arthur, Marie and Rose - not for a 2 minute mini speech as usual, but for a dialog on a given controversial topic. The two guys argued between having 1 woman in your life and being a playboy, and that went rather well. For the 2 girls it got much more difficult: they had to start with certain letters that Tulia would show - and the whole floor was bursting in laughter about the sentences these two came up with. Hilarious.
On the prepared speeches, the first one was Edith's project from the "Facilitating Discussion" manual, where she is the Panel Moderator. Dave, Christian and myself formed her Panel and discussed certain aspects about hosting a district conference in Barcelona.
Veronika then presenter her CC speech number 9 - Persuade with Power - under the title "Now more than ever it is time to give...". It was a great topic for this project, and used a word play... the 2 things starting with C :)
During the coaching part, we heard Marie and Carol Ann evaluate the Veronika and Edith. One important aspect I remember was that any given powerpoint visual aid should stay exactly that: an aid. Slides that are so explicit with formulated sentences, that the speaker is not required if the audience can read, will make a good performance for the presenter very difficult. A good lesson we all took home that night.
The session ended with the remaining reports - Dima on time, Rosy on filler words, Angela brilliantly on the overall session, followed by some club business from Melinda. If I remember correctly, Josefine turned from guest to member, and the whole show was followed by almost EVERYONE staying for drinks and filling the upstairs area of this nearby bar completely. I think 2 years ago we had less people for the Christmas dinner than that. You got to love this social aspect of our Prestigious Speakers Club.
Yours, Kai
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