Ruwi Toastmasters Club: Session 154

Training Day.

That is what our energetic VP-E had arranged for today's session, in view of the contests starting from next week. It turned out to be an entertaining and educative day. Well attended too.

The session was kicked off by SAA Viswanath.

Acting President TM Chaitanya opened the session with the inspiring story of the eagle, who has many life lessons to teach us.

TMOD Vaishali had chosen as her theme "Kite Flying Festival", very appropriate for the season and she regaled us between role plays with snippets regarding kites and festivals that celebrated kites. She also asked role players what philosophical aspect they could draw from kites, which provided interesting answers.

Timer role was taken up by MTM Shobha who explained the rules of engagement.

Wordmaster TM Shanavas introduced the word OPULENT to the audience. An easy enough word to use in a round robin although usage by role players was not opulent.

Evaluation criteria for a Level 1 Project 2 speech about to be delivered were laid out by TM Bhaskaran.

TM Yashpal delivered his Level 1 Project 2 speech titled "W.A.L.K.", which is an acronym for Witness, Accept, Love and Know thyself, a concept promoted by international speaker Nipun Shah. Thanks for the motivation and inspiration, TM Yashpal.

There were two training sessions planned today, perfectly timed as the corresponding competitions are next week.

TM Saiju Victor took a training session on TABLE TOPICS - How to crack it - and shared the different approaches to take off on the topic. Interestingly, for each approach, he ensured that the speaker called up by the topic master TM Lawrence used that particular technique. The supporting slides were a great hit too. The session was fun as well as entertaining.

TM G Kumar took a training session on SPEECH CRAFTING, being practically a master in the business, having given more than 30 speeches and having mentored many. He took us through the speech crafting journey, right from choosing a message, to putting down everything, organizing, connecting, authenticating, closing. It was a treasure to learn the whole craft at one go.

TM Bhaskaran gave his evaluation of TM Yashpal's speech.

TM Venkat as GE gave an appreciative comment on the whole session.

TM Chaitanya conducted the business session, focusing on the upcoming contests next week and encouraged all to enroll pronto pronto. Response was warm but needed to be fanned into hot.

President Rajat delivered the closing address and distributed the awards, but there were some more surprises in store. A cake appeared to celebrate the birthday of the President, which was today and there was a joyous cake-cutting (and thankfully no cake-smearing). A great way to end the session and thanks to all concerned once again.