4th Dimension Toastmasters

Call to order

Dave Black called the meeting to order at 18.20.

Kirsten Long, our Vice President Education really showed members what Toastmasters Training helps us achieve. She took charge of the meeting: Not only did she compile the programme, she was the Chairman, in the absence of our President, Andrew Timberlake, and The Toastmaster, but also an evaluator!

Kirsten, in her role as Chairman, welcomed everyone and set the scene for the evening, which was based around limericks (poems of just 5 lines), by reading a Limerick, written by Flicka. She then asked everyone to introduce themselves, by where possible, reading the limerick they had written.

The Toast – Water or Wine

Sue Munro proposed a Toast to critical thinking, and encouraged us all to question and think critically, not just accept all we hear on the media. She also noted, interestingly that the toast should only be drunk with one of the two “W”s “Water or Wine”

Toastmaster

Then Kirsten, The Chairman, handed over to Kirsten the Toastmaster! It was a great pity Flicka was absent in body, but with us in spirit because she had given Kirsten a wonderful selection of limericks which facilitated Kirsten’s role as Toastmaster and co-ordinated the whole evening.

Clinton a guest, after a briefing from Zibu, was an efficient Timekeeper.

Sue Anne was our grammarian and Um counter, Coralie headed up evaluation and David Black was the Hark Master.

The Speakers

Paul Smith, the first speaker for the evening used personal examples to give us valuable insight into how not to set up our own businesses in a speech entitled The 3 F’s. He highlighted the 3 requirements for setting up a successful business: Knowledge of the market, ensuring the market is big enough to support your venture and passion for the venture.

Danie Roux, in his very humorous speech entitled “The Virtues of a Knowledge Economy Worker”, highlighted the difference between workers in the industrial age, where patience, hard work and a humble attitude were the requirements. These are totally different to the requirements in our information age economy. Danie maintained that the essential needs here are laziness, impatience and hubris. Laziness and impatience ensure the worker looks at a better, simpler way to undertake his work.

Graham Nicholls gained the admiration of the audience when he opened his speech entitled “Marriage and Age”, by telling us that he had been married for 36 years – to the same woman!

He outlined key factors, e.g. willingness to sort out problems by understanding the other person and having compassion, which would help reduce the South African divorce rate.

He also humorously described the changes to their live’s that the audience could expect as they approached Graham’s current age and even beyond that.

Table Topics

After recess Paul Smith ran a fun topic session based on bumper stickers asking the speakers to explain where, why and from whom they bought the bumper sticker, which was the title of their speech.

The speakers and their bumper stickers were:

Monica -  Some village in Texas is missing an idiot.

Anilin  - Honk if you love peace and quiet.

David Black - Some people are only alive because it is illegal to shoot them.

Graham - I ‘m speeding because I need to Pee.

Richard - Rehab is for quitters.

Evaluation

Coralie chaired the evaluation and evaluated Paul’s speech.

Zibu evaluated Danie’s speech, Erich Richard’s speech and Kirsten Graham’s speech.

Sue-Anne the grammarian counted 23 “ums” and “ahs” and noted that no one had used the word of the day!

David Black as Hark Master battled to extract fines from an audience who had listened well!

Sue Munro presented and elicited discussion on the proposed budget.

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