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Aug. 11th, 2013 05:49 pmIt's been a Toastmasters-heavy few weeks, actually.
The usual schedule is that we have two meetings a month, or one meeting every two weeks, which is not always the same thing; in some months the weekday in question occurs five times, and then we have to decide whether we're going to have a third meeting that month.
July was just such a month, and we decided to have the third meeting, with the result that the last meeting of July was followed only a week later by the first meeting of August. And then that was rapidly followed by one of the two annual contest days.
I was the rostered MC for the last meeting in July, which I wrote about last time.
I ended up being the MC for the first meeting in August as well, because the rostered person had to cancel at short notice and I was the most available person to fill in. Weirdly, it was much less stressful, despite having only an hour to prepare. Having all the procedures and things fresh from last week helped a great deal, of course. (And perhaps having only an hour to prepare was as much a help as a hindrance; there was no time to panic, and there was the thought that if the organisation hadn't been done properly before the thing came into my hands, it couldn't be my fault this time.)
The meeting itself went quite well, although it was a bit odd in its own way. I've mentioned before a meeting where a lot of people were away and the members were almost outnumbered by the guests; at this meeting, though I didn't count, I'm pretty sure the guests actually did outnumber the members present. (There have been some outreach efforts going on, so we had a bunch of people showing up to see what Toastmasters was like, and they happened to do it at what would otherwise have been a small, quiet meeting. I have hopes that some of them will come back in a few weeks to see what a fully-stocked meeting looks like.)
As you may recall, Toastmaster contests come in pairs, and yesterday it was the Humorous Speech (5-7 minutes, prepared in advance) and the Table Topics (1-2 minutes, ex tempore). As usual, I entered the Table Topics contest and failed to place, but did better than last year. This year my strengths were body language and use of stage space, as well as finding an idiosyncratic twist on the topic; my major weakness, as usual, was failure to develop the speech with supporting details and just sort of trailing off at the end instead of finding a solid conclusion. I feel I should acknowledge the contest organizer, who set a topic question that included two or three sentences of scene-setting; the time it took to announce (and, in accordance with the rules, it was announced twice through in its entirety) was extremely valuable thinking time.
The Humorous Speech contest was also memorable. There were two competitors, one of whom had stepped up less than 24 hours before the contest started. She's also one of our newer members, so what with one thing and the other she was feeling quite nervous before the contest. And then she won. (The other speech was more polished, but less laugh-out-loud funny.)
In the end, I think everybody had a good time, which is arguably the important thing.
The usual schedule is that we have two meetings a month, or one meeting every two weeks, which is not always the same thing; in some months the weekday in question occurs five times, and then we have to decide whether we're going to have a third meeting that month.
July was just such a month, and we decided to have the third meeting, with the result that the last meeting of July was followed only a week later by the first meeting of August. And then that was rapidly followed by one of the two annual contest days.
I was the rostered MC for the last meeting in July, which I wrote about last time.
I ended up being the MC for the first meeting in August as well, because the rostered person had to cancel at short notice and I was the most available person to fill in. Weirdly, it was much less stressful, despite having only an hour to prepare. Having all the procedures and things fresh from last week helped a great deal, of course. (And perhaps having only an hour to prepare was as much a help as a hindrance; there was no time to panic, and there was the thought that if the organisation hadn't been done properly before the thing came into my hands, it couldn't be my fault this time.)
The meeting itself went quite well, although it was a bit odd in its own way. I've mentioned before a meeting where a lot of people were away and the members were almost outnumbered by the guests; at this meeting, though I didn't count, I'm pretty sure the guests actually did outnumber the members present. (There have been some outreach efforts going on, so we had a bunch of people showing up to see what Toastmasters was like, and they happened to do it at what would otherwise have been a small, quiet meeting. I have hopes that some of them will come back in a few weeks to see what a fully-stocked meeting looks like.)
As you may recall, Toastmaster contests come in pairs, and yesterday it was the Humorous Speech (5-7 minutes, prepared in advance) and the Table Topics (1-2 minutes, ex tempore). As usual, I entered the Table Topics contest and failed to place, but did better than last year. This year my strengths were body language and use of stage space, as well as finding an idiosyncratic twist on the topic; my major weakness, as usual, was failure to develop the speech with supporting details and just sort of trailing off at the end instead of finding a solid conclusion. I feel I should acknowledge the contest organizer, who set a topic question that included two or three sentences of scene-setting; the time it took to announce (and, in accordance with the rules, it was announced twice through in its entirety) was extremely valuable thinking time.
The Humorous Speech contest was also memorable. There were two competitors, one of whom had stepped up less than 24 hours before the contest started. She's also one of our newer members, so what with one thing and the other she was feeling quite nervous before the contest. And then she won. (The other speech was more polished, but less laugh-out-loud funny.)
In the end, I think everybody had a good time, which is arguably the important thing.
