Tonight was one of those sink-or-swim nights! The odds were stacked against us with many people away, then access trouble to the building, but we eventually got going – we chose to swim!
Dave B did an incredible job piecing the meeting together, both in the days beforehand when he took over the Toastmaster role and on the night, entirely re-scheduling the agenda.
Tim’s speech was #5 from the Technical Presentations manual, ‘Enhancing a technical talk with the internet’. “What I’m about to do, is about as close as you can get to IT-suicide as you could ever imagine” began Tim, as he described how his entire presentation would be done, live, on the internet! And it almost worked! “Everyone can blog” was a 15min lesson, complete with handout on how to make a meeting Recap on our website – a meeting role we’re going to start scheduling next term.
Kathy’s speech “Have you come to your senses” began with a bottle of rum & and can of coke! Where was this heading?! But the story went, that Kathy once happily drank a rum & coke her friend prepared, that didn’t actually have any rum in it at all. How did this happen? Well Kathy has no sense of smell! “Imagine not knowing the smell of fresh bread, flowers, perfume or even rotten food?” challenged Kathy. In this captivating speech, Kathy built layer after layer of interesting facts and experiences relating to her absence of this sense, which evaluator Maya praised for her vibrant language. Congratulations on a great speech tonight Kathy!
With the clock ticking, there was only time for a quick round of tabletopics based on headlines from Ade before we had to pack up. One absolutely memorable moment was when Jennifer casually explained how Cadbury had only recently discovered the secret to the rippled surface on Mars – they use a thin wind in the manufacturing process! Incredible.
Then to wrap-up this nutty evening, the crew adjourned to Misceo’s Cafe for a drink and debrief. A motion was passed that the next schedule should include a short meeting and a drink at Misceo’s once every two months!
See you all next time!