June 24th will long live in my memory as one of the high spots of Spinnaker Speakers so far.
At 8:15 am John Webber (Solent and Arun Speakers) and I (Keith Oliver) met outside the studios of Express FM to record a programme for the Business show to be broadcast on the Tursday night. We were met by the show's host, Miles Henson, who explained the procedures and protocols and then for the next hour we had an enjoyable time chatting about Toastmasters, speaking skills, and the importance of communication in the business world.
We met up again that evening for our interactive workshop, ably led by John Webber, the National Evaluation Champion 2013 and National Speech finalist.
It was almost standing room only as we welcomed guests and fellow Toastmasters from our sister clubs. The meeting had a truly international feel with participants from Mexico, Greece, Russia and New Zealand.
Michael John opened the meeting and after the preliminary welcomes, house keeping and protocols it fell to Brent Crouch to lead the warm up with what we did, or would have liked to have done on the longest day of the year. The beach, Stonehege and hot sunny days with family and friends featured prominently.
We swiftly moved onto the main attraction with John explaining that any speech should have three focusses, the speaker, the ideas and the audience. Focussing on just one will be result in an ego trip which will soon put off your audience, a boring list of facts or preaching to the audience. The art is to get a balance.
We then split into pairs and spoke first of our own experience, then viewed it how someone else may observe it and then gave a final story. A couple of volunteers then gave their stories to the room.
We broke for a network break with our hosts, Richard and Carole, doing sterling service to make sure we were fed and watered in the time available.
In the second half we started with Table Topics led by Robin Chawner, who called on Gavin Meikle, Antonia Harrison (Solent) and Vanessa King (Division Governor elect) to speak.
Keith Oliver now gave an evaluation of the Table Topics highlighting the methods used by the participants to gain time to get their thoughts together.
Vanessa was then asked to say a few words about her forthcoming role, before Wendy Benson gave her overall thoughts of the evening as General Evaluator
Micchael John gave out the awards, presenting John Webber with a Spinnaker fridge magnet as a memento of his evening, before awarding Gavin the award for best Table Topics.
Keith Oliver closed the meeting with club business before thanking everyone for a fantastic evening and wishing them a safe journey home.