West Pennant Hills Toastmasters is hosted the Area 2 International Speech and Evaluation Contest on the 17th February 2019 at the Cherrybrook Community and Culture Centre – Redgum Hall.

Here are the contest winners:

International Speech Contest:
1st – Tom Ware
2nd – Johnny Manolelis
3rd – Leanne Varga

Evaluation Contest:
1st – Sakeena De Souza
2nd – Corinne Baird
3rd – Sophie Pang

The meeting opened with Shirley Childs as Chairman. We welcomed eight guests who arrived. After an action packed meeting, we inducted our newest member, John Inglis (pictured).

Toast

TO TOAST EMERGENCY SERVICES WHOSE WORK IS OFTEN UNSEEN AND TAKEN FOR GRANTED – front line brave people – Hills has highest number of volunteers from one area in Australia – in time of emergency – fire, flood, high winds, they are there.

Word of the Night

The word of Salubrious, used by many speakers afterwards.

Table Topics

Vicky Mina hosted the Table Topics session, explaining to visitors how making short speeches to answer an impromptu question is a great preparation for the real thing – thinking on your feet, while having a structure with a beginning, middle and end.

Some of her questions related to Valentines Day. Other questions were general. Visitors who participated spoke confidently.

Speeches

“Getting over the Hump”, Mel Colgar – speaking about public speaking as a constant labour of love – practise practise practise, speaking to oneself, the chair, the whoever will listen, even if they run away… keep practising. It improves your confidence, which imparts confidence to the audience. She used personal stories and humour.

“You’re So South African”, Clare Fraga – What is this, why does her boss keep saying this? Clare developed talk around speaking styles, and talked about the style of Donald Trump versus Barak Obama. What are the four styles: analytical, direct, etc. South Africans, like Australians, tend to be very direct, conversational style, structured, engaging hand gestures that kept us following intently.

“Going Forward”, Johnny Manolelis – He talked about mentoring, and the importance of asking for someone’s opinion. In the beginning, he would adopt a similar style to Julius Caesar, who was quoted as saying, “I came, I saw, I conquered”. He thought he knew how to give talks, until he learned wisdom and realised how little he knew!

“Sweet and Sour”, Rowlanda Orchiston – She shared a surprising true story about an expensive grand piano ending up in a rubbish dump (the sour) that ended up repaired and restored to the Cable Beach Resort.