Meeting No 608
- Details
- Published on Sunday, 31 July 2011
- Written by Mary Byrne
Meeting No 608 Monday 25th July 2011
Theme: “Long walk to Freedom”
Only 10 toastmasters braved the cold weather to attend our recent meeting.
Presidential Address
Our new President, John-Peter Gernaat addressed the club and spoke on his plans for his term of office.
He is aiming at Transformers being a President’s Distinguished Club. This will be achieved by adopting the metric of our new District Governor, Erich Viege - which is that for every meeting there will be 20 members, 3-5 speeches and 1 new member.
This would relate to a minimum of 57 prepared speeches presented over the next 12 months.
Transformers committee for the coming year has a good balance of experience and new members to assist in this endeavour,
But a toastmasters club is self managed so every member assists our success.
Taking part in an adult education program, such as Toastmasters, requires setting goals and he encouraged us all to devote some time to decide on what each of us wants to achieve.
There will be new items on the program, primarily to promote the Competent Leadership track but more importantly that each member gets evaluated on the role they perform at each meeting.
He is looking forward to a productive year in a fun environment.
Theme: “The Club is the newest member”
(see News section for full report)
Toast of the evening: Mary proposed “a Short walk to Freedom” in honour of the Discovery walk the previous day when 50 000 people reclaimed the streets from the cars.
Word of the evening: Nontu’s word was ‘Injustice’ – but only Keith was able to do justice to it!
Prepared speeches
Matthys Meintjies (CC3) : “Fish have feelings too”
Matthys refuted 2 misconceptions about fish – that they are stupid and that they don’t care.
He gave examples of how they can be trained to do tricks and how they can retain memories for up to 5 years.
Fish have Business sense and a work ethic – the ‘Cleaner fish’ egging each other on biting them if they fall below standard.
As an example of good parenting he spoke of the hard headed cat fish who fasts for a month as he holds the sperm in his mouth!
Glenice Ebedes (Adv) “The Deal”
This was a three part presentation firstly defining negotiation skills and processes.
This was followed by a simulated negotiation situation where Glenice, as a landscape designer, had to convince a client (Sumari) that the original plans for a water feature were foiled by a large rock underground and that the subsequent plans would cost another R5000.
The third part involved feedback from the audience.
The general consensus was that Sumari could have given Glenice a harder time on the price issue, but the introduction of a new puppy into the formal garden did pose a challenge.
Table Topics
Margie presented an intriguing session where participants had to define a problem/issue in their life and then had to select a book which assisted in their salvation.
Who Issue Book
Ryan / Fear of volcanos in Pilansberg / Food & Wine Pairing Book
Nontu / Fear of Snakes / 1812: Napoleon’s March on Moscow
Sumari / Losing Weight / (Engineering) Design Paradigms
Mary / Depression / Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
Glenice / Blisters in Comrades / The Beatles Complete
On a sad note we say farewell to Angelica who is returning to America. We wish her every success.