The Florida Toastmasters held their opening meeting on Tuesday, 21 January, with the theme ‘Success’. Only three meetings away from their 1 000th public speaking evening, the Toastmasters lit the fires in the bellies of all in attendance.
The club’s president, Robert de Kramer, extended a warm welcome to everyone after banging the gavel to call the meeting to order. Vivien Katzav opened the evening with a brief speech about identifying their plans for the future and determining how to achieve them.
Tim Knights took his place at the lectern to propose the Toast to Toastmasters International, followed shortly by Karen Gray’s Toast of the Evening.
During the business session, Tim was welcomed to the front of the room once again where he spoke about ways that the club and individual Toastmasters could improve on their evaluation skills.
Then it was time for the prepared speeches. Victor Chewe tackled the subject of climate change and Mandy Gobisang covered a popular topic among the group: communication skills.
Vivien then welcomed the Table Topics Master for the evening, Diana Rodrigues.
These impromptu speeches are always entertaining. Toastmasters pick a topic out of a hat and then need to impress the other members in the club with whatever they can come up with relating to the subject.
The Table Topics session saw Jakkie Müller speaking about how successful his cousin has become and Chris Ntlama talking about how the strongest factors for achieving success are self-esteem and motivation. The final three impromptu speeches saw Kevin Naicker speaking about constant learning, Matthew Knights talking about decision-making and leadership skills, and Morné Assam speaking about what it takes to achieve success.
Dick Hallett was the Evaluation Chair for the evening and he spoke about how evaluations allow speakers to grow.
Three new members were welcomed to the club before Chris Ntlama was presented with his trophy for Best Impromptu speech.
