… meeting with NDG Leader Toastmasters! (Ha ha, we had you!).
On July 25, 2019 Beyond Words came together with NDG Leaders Toastmasters to conduct a joint meeting. Held at NDG Leader’s charming meeting venue at St. Thomas Church, it was a meeting that saw the best of both worlds, as Beyond Words set the bar high for an advanced Toastmasters meeting and the dynamic members of NDG leaders raising to the challenge.
Meeting Minutes: (Top row, left to right) : SAA Cilei Ribeiro, Chairperson Nabila Bourezane handing over to Toastmaster Aurore Liang, Topicsmaster Katy Morin leading the THINK FAST! session (Bottom row, left to right): General Evaluator Gabriel Duguay, Keith Martin listening in intently ( He was called for an instant evaluation later!), A melange of Toastmasters and Guests completely immersed in the meeting.
The theme for the meeting was Fireworks and we got cracking in no time. NDG Leader’s president, TM Nabila Bourezane kickstarted the meeting, welcoming the guests and introducing the head table.
Following the business session, the Toastmaster of the day, DTM Aurore Liang took over to conduct the education session, which consisted of two brilliant speeches:
- From NDG Leader, TM Nabila Bourezane’s speech was titled “Could we live in the moment?”. She spoke about how often we are distracted and fail to live in the moment and made us all ponder.
- From Beyond Words, TM Marna Murray’s speech was titled “I am not dead yet”. What would you do if you receive a call from your credit card company informing “YOU” that “YOU are dead”? That’s what happened to Marna. Apparently, after dealing with the trauma of the situation, you just do a speech about it! Marna’s objective was to “Connect with Storytelling” and she connected with the audience through funny and engaging story telling.
The THINK FAST! session was led by Beyond Words’s president TM Katy Morin. She had the participants working in pairs enacting various situations. Would be for or against Silent Fireworks ? How’d you convince a firework competition organizer to have you onboard as a judge ? How would you as someone who could only see but not hear, explain the fireworks to someone who can only hear but not see? All the participants did a fantastic job. After each conversation, members were randomly called upon to provide an instant evaluation.
Speeches and THINK FAST!
The Coaching session was led by Beyond Word’s VP – Public Relations Gabriel Duguay. The evaluations followed Beyond Words’ advanced evaluation style – a content evaluation, a delivery evaluation and a round robin evaluation from all the members. After the evaluations, the advanced timer report was delivered by DTM Oren Weintrub (from NDG Leader). TM Cilei Ribeiro (NDG Leader) reminded us to not use so many so’s in her Ah Counter report and Grammarian for the day TM Sonia Gaona (Area 64 Director) recounted the bazillion times we sparkled by using the word of the day which was “Sparkle”.
The meeting concluded after the awards and comments from the guests. TM Marna Murray won the Best Speaker award, TM Shivashree Vysali won the best evaluator and TM Randi Schlar (Division G Director) & TM Peter Allan won the Best Table topics award for their debate on silent fireworks.
