To City Women Speakers

Club News:

  • · Congratulations to Sin who claimed ​First Place​ at last week’s L56 Evaluation Contest. Sin goes on to represent our Club and Area L56 at Division L’s contest 17 April, 2020
  • · On the subject of Division L’s Contest: We need Timers, Counters, SAA and attendees to volunteer. Please contact me or register here for the Virtual Contest. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/toastmasters-division-l-international-speech-evaluation-contest-tickets-97631790313
  • · Thank you to the committee who helped with the preparation and testing for our first virtual Club Meeting and thanks also for the nonstop support during the actual 1 April meeting 🙂
  • · Future Meetings:  As we navigate the new world of Zoom virtual meetings, we will be tweaking our approach and things may change from meeting to meeting so please do read any emails issued by the committee regarding Zoom meetings

Meeting Summary:
We had 26 participants at our first virtual meeting, all of whom stayed to the end, which I think is blooming marvellous!

Laura delivered the first of our two Prepared Speeches with ​Tailoring your Communication​. Laura asked the audience if they’d taken part in any personality tests – which was a test in itself as we grappled with how to respond in this virtual world. She then walked us through four different “colours” of communication; Red = Results Orientated, Blue = Creative, Yellow = Collaborative and Green = Analytical and Detail-oriented before she concluded with some extra words of advice on how to communicate with her style, Green.

Sin told an entertaining, inspiring and topical story with The Travails of WFH which is a Level 3 Pathways project. This was a perfect topic for a virtual meeting. Sin utilised her workstation area to give us the feeling of her Working From Home reality, along with comical facial expressions & eye contact through the camera which connected Sin to her audience and helped conveyed her underlying current of humour. Her story was inspiring as Sin mentioned a fund-raising event she is coordinating, with £5k raised in the opening days. See here for more information: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sinyeehon_the-big-ing-uk-charity-challenge-activity-6650695043386531840-eS1z

Kate had an unexpected challenge while delivering her evaluation on Laura’s speech as her partner crept in the room behind her, not once but twice during her 3-minutes of airtime. I wonder what sort of feedback he received from her afterwards? Jo showed such comfort and confidence during her evaluation of Sin that it’s clear she is used to WFH and speaking to the camera.

After a short break during which cameras and microphones were turned off to allow us to stand and stretch, we moved onto a presentation from Phil Baker on getting the most out of virtual meetings. Phil attended our 4 March meeting as a guest and when he subsequently offered to share some pearls of wisdom in this new world of communication, I gratefully accepted.

Next up, Table Topics led by ​Esmé​. Members were challenged to give “on the spot” short speeches on things such as where they will travel once restrictions are lifted and we heard about the novel use of chickpea water for creating speciality dishes during lockdown. The TT’s were evaluated by Helen …. and me… Helen had a technical glitch and was kicked out of Zoom just as the TT’s started. Thank you to the two members who sent me a private Zoom message letting me know as I was able to step in to evaluate the 1st two TT speakers & Helen picked up the other 3.

At various moments during the meeting, ​VP PR Veronica​, shared links with attendees so they could write-up speaker feedback and for voting for Best Evaluator and Best Table Topic. Doing this virtually is a vast improvement on the laborious tallying up of handwritten votes. A big thank you to Veronica for this help.

Entertainment came from an unexpected area as our ​Timer, Dena​, held up a sprig of Parsley as an alternative to the Green Card, a yellow flower for the Amber Card and a tomato for the Red Card. ​Grammarian​, Amina was possibly disappointed by how little ​Apocryphal​, the Word of The Day was used but the speakers impressed her with their descriptive language and use of rhetorical devices.

Finally, our meeting was evaluated by a Past President of our club and our Past Area Director – Nadine beamed into our view from her hometown, Munich to be our General Evaluator. It was great to see Nadine back and exciting to hear that she’d be wearing a Baby on Board badge if commuting in London. Congratulations to you and Dan!

Best Evaluator: Kate
Best Table Topics: Kiran
Best Speaker​: Not awarded as we had speeches from 2 members, and we require 3 to carry out the vote
Please click here for details of our next club meeting

Carrie Gow