Bedford Speakers

In Tony’s absence, this week’s minutes are brought to you by Narinder.

MEETING MINUTES – THURSDAY 08 DECEMBER 2011

23nd Club Meeting of the Year

Season Greetings

What an evening!!! Scintillating speeches, felicitous table topics all with generous helpings of humour. Thank-you to all for attending and participating, special thanks to Mac our Toastmaster for his fascinating Christmas facts throughout the programme. We had 12 members and 1 guest (Linda).

The word of the day was replaced with:
Paul Hindess Request for the Evening: Any seasonal word or reference

Speeches

We had three speakers this evening:

1. Jaimen Lathia –“ What goes on inside my head” (Competent Communicator: 1 Icebreaker). Jaimen ‘winner of the mind’ delivered a speech about his philosophical outlook on life. The speech projected both clarity and simplicity of expression and ended with Albert Einstein’s quote “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious”.
2. Cheryl Green – The Moral of the Story (Storytelling manual Project: 3). Cheryl, with her usual flare and energy shared a tale of Christmas past. A time where Space Invaders was a must-buy present for every man especially when diamonds were at stake. Great use of vocal variety and body language. Cheryl had us hook, line and sinker from start to finish. Well done!
3. Tim Sawyer – “Ahead of our time” (Competent Communicator: 1 Icebreaker). Tim’s speech projected an air of cool confidence with panoply of description to set the scene. The speech was pitched and delivered at the right level with a perfect balance of humour. Tim was commended for negligible use of ahs and
   umms, an added bonus on a first speech.

Table Topics

Gayna Cooper hosted Table Topics on a much-anticipated Christmas theme. Gayna’s natural positive approach helped to instil confidence and ease in the participants.

Well done to all those who rose to the occasion. Paul Breakey (Devising Plan B following Rudolph’s unfortunate broken antler), Paul Hindess (Worst Christmas present), Paul Hayward (invent new tradition at Christmas), Linda (Perfect Christmas present), Narinder (Explaining to child why Santa hasn’t delivered presents on eve) and Martin (Ideal person to spend your Christmas).

In addition, Mac’s ‘Just a minute’ part of the agenda provided the perfect opportunity for Dave to share his evening of Tall Tales at Eldergate, where we were intrigued to learn of his political links with Boris Johnson.

Evaluators

Paul Breakey, Martin, Paul Hayward, Dave and Val shared their pearls of wisdom and provided the speakers with good constructive feedback.

Meeting Evaluator

Narinder rounded off the meeting with a personal twist on the role of meeting evaluator, delivering a time travel summary of the year’s events with the added bonus of including every ‘word of the day’ from the last 6months.

Awards

Best Speaker: Cheryl Green
Best Evaluator: Paul Hayward
Best Table Topic: Paul Hayward
Humour: Cheryl Green

Future events

1. Speeches and Evaluation Contest – 23rd February 2012
2. Area Speeches and Evaluation Contest – 21 March 2012
3. Division Speeches and Evaluation Contest – 21 April 2012

Have a merry Christmas &
a lovely New Year

Next Club Meeting: Thursday 12th January

PS. Note to self‐ “easy on the mince pies”.