This week’s meeting kicked off with a warm welcome from VP of Education, Tina Joe, followed by the One World, Many Voices segment led by Toastmaster Diana. She shared insights on the Renters Act which recently went into effect in London, and shared comparisons to how it favored the landlord under the old laws like the ability for the landlord to increase rent frequently and a fixed contract, now it has flipped to favoring the tenant to allow things like a cap on rent increases, and specifically allowing pets.
After the One World, Many Voices segment, Tina Joe introduced the Bias Flag and explained its purpose. The Bias Flag is a tool our club uses to promote inclusive and mindful language throughout our meetings.
The meeting was then turned over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Abdulrahman, who quickly covered all the roles for the meeting noting that all were filled. Abdulrahman introduced the Word of the Day, synergy, and provided the definition of combined power rather than individual efforts. Abdulrahman went on to describe why this is the most interesting word in business to them. With that, he guided us through a great meeting.
We had two speakers this week. Toastmaster Abigayle delivered a speech titled “A Tradition of Steps: The Evolution of Graduation from 12th to the 21st century.” where she spoke about the origination of several traditions related to graduation like the cap and gown, as well as how the ceremonies have become more public and celebratory. Despite all of the changes, the meaning has remained the same.
Our second speaker, Toastmaster Syed, presented a speech titled “The Scariest Moments of My Life,” which recounted a story that helped explain their fear of heights. This included a personal recount of riding to school on a curvy road and almost getting in an accident when the driver decided to overtake a slow moving vehicle when another vehicle was approaching from the opposite direction.
Table Topics were led by Toastmaster Kehinde, who kept the group on their toes with a thought-provoking set of questions. Questions included: When have you seen a team accomplish something together that was far greater than an individual person, describe how you achieved surprise success with a partner, and what example from nature best demonstrates synergy?
Next, we moved into our Breakfast of Champions segment for those located on the east coast of the United States, or Lunch of Champions, or Dinner of Champions depending on where you are located, which serves as the evaluation and feedback portion of the meeting. Toastmaster Summer led the evaluation team and provided thoughtful feedback, highlighting that both speeches were from Pathways, which is fantastic to see from their perspective as the previous VP of Education. Speaker evaluations were delivered by Toastmaster Kerstin and Toastmaster Matthew, who emphasized the strengths of each speech and provided useful feedback for growth. Toastmaster Gulnara and Toastmaster Tim kept us on track by timing speeches and tracking filler words.
The meeting adjourned at 7:58 AM EST, and we’re already looking forward to next week’s meeting.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be at 7 a.m. on May 22, EST. If you would like to join our meeting as a guest, contact us for the meeting link.
The roles for the next meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Gulnara Askerova
One World, Many Voices: OPEN
Speaker 1: Md Adnan
Speaker 2: Yuko Honda
Table Topics: Summer Murphy
General Evaluator: Norris Bass
Evaluator 1: Savvy Murphy
Evaluator 2: Tim Murphy
Timer: Abdulrahman Albazie
Grammarian: Lisa Garofola
