What a warm meeting it was! Freddie Daniells called the meeting to order with his usual energy and handed over to the acting President Monika Swiderska.
Monika told us about us how she hoped to have some time free from her studies, but it never happened. She also used the quote from Woody Allen “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans” to highlight how challenging time management can be. Then, Monika greeted our guests and handed over to Odile Facih, who was our Toastmaster of the Night.
Odile introduced a theme of the night- meanings of names and a word of the day, which was “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, a truly challenging one! Our Toastmaster suggested that “superb” is an easier synonym, but as we are Excalibur, a club of excellence, and we like a challenge, we should try to use “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.
Then, Odile introduced Prakash Patel, our Timekeeper, whose name comes from Sanskrit and means “bright light”.
Mustapha Hanafi, in Arabic “the chosen one”, was our Table Topics Master. He asked a variety of questions based loosely on transferable skills. Freddie Daniells told us what Disney character he would like to be and was evaluated by Irene. Then, Monika Swiderska was to think outside the box by answering (or not answering!) the question which celebrities she would like to invite for a dinner. She was evaluated by Hannah can der Deijl. Our guest Rhona told us about porridge in Tenerife and was evaluated by Tony Winyard. Adam explained why he would take a laptop, flipchart and pen to the island and was then evaluated by Marcin. David Lennon told us what a lovely child he was and got some comments from Chinkata Okpara. Finally, AJ explained why he is the best person to play in the movie. He was evaluated by Katja van Koten.
We heard 3 speeches this time. Our 1st speaker was Tony Winyard who told us about his trip to Norway and how a snowbank saved him from falling off the cliff. It was project 1 from The Entertaining Speaker manual.
Our next speaker was Marcin Tolysz who gave his 1st speech at Excalibur! Marcin was telling us about his experiences from Toastmaster conferences, trying to convince us that these events are brilliant. It was project 4 from Speaking to Inform manual.
Our last speaker was Brian Skelton, who was a very effective Bank Training Manager for the night. He was introducing us, bank employees, to Toastmasters and Persuaded with Power that we should all join the new club.
Irene Bradshaw gave Tony commendations on how effectively he achieved the objectives of his speech by telling us an entertaining personal story. She also liked his fluidity and the use of humour, especially the information about a town named Hell. However, she noted that Tony’s gestures were a bit tense and he tended to be static. She suggested he should use the stage more.
Hannah van der Deijl evaluated Marcin. She spotted that he owned the stage and was very confident. She also liked the information he presented. Her suggestions for improvements were to work on the structure to make it clearer, make sure that visual aids completely support the message and maybe focus on more technical information.
Katja van Koten commended Brian on his knowledge about Toastmasters and his credibility. She also felt that he was very passionate about this project and he sold the idea very effectively. Katja recommended that Brian could have used less information. She also suggested that he could pause more after asking questions.
Open feedback session was led by Chinkata Okpara. Our Toastmaster of the Night confessed that she couldn’t find the meaning of Chinkata’s name in Google, but there are 9 people in the world with this name.
The meeting was General Evaluated by the very efficient Andy O’Sullivan, Past Division B Governor, and current District Chief Judge.
The winners of the competition were: David Lennon for Best Table Topic, Tony Winyard for Best Speaker and Katja van Koten for Best Evaluator.
Monika then mentioned the dates to save in the calendars:
14th June – Past Presidents meeting & 28th June – the last meeting of TM year with a bit of a party! With hats!
Finally, we made our way to the corner pub!
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