Posts Tagged ‘white rose speakers’

Following the recent elections, we handed over to the new committee at White Rose and celebrated with a meal at Las Iguanas. The restaurant itself was a big disappointment – it took an hour and a half from us arriving to the food being served, but the company was good.

Earlier this month we held the elections for White Rose Speakers. Erik was elected president, Jane will be taking over from me as Vice President of Education, I’ll be moving to Vice President of Public Relations, Tony will be remaining as Sargent At Arms and Michael will be remaining as Treasurer. Kartik and Sam will be joining the committee as Vice President of Membership and Secretary. Congratulations to everyone who was elected!

We also celebrated our District Governor Anthony’s birthday with some cake.

This video was taken at the White Rose Speakers club level contest of the 2013 Toastmasters International Speech Contest. I had already won at Leeds City Toastmasters, so this was just a showcase, but I went on to win the Area level contest as well.

Last month saw White Rose Speakers hold our 2013 international speech and evaluation contest. Actually, we held a speech showcase rather than a contest as I was ineligible to compete due to already having won at Leeds City, so we elected Erik is our club representative to take our club to the area contest.

Meanwhile the evaluation contest was more hotly contested, and I was worried that running out of time hurt my evaluation, but it seems everyone suffered from a little of that and I ended up taking first place. I’m looking forward to learning from these lessons and moving on to the area contest.

I’m pleased to report that White Rose Speakers experienced great success with our Open Meeting last week!

The agenda finally came together, albeit with only one prepared speech as the other speaker dropped out on the morning of the event and included lots of our regular members returning as well as a visit from our Area Governor Shelagh, who it is always a pleasure to have along.

More importantly however, we signed up two brand new members and one-relapsed member, giving a positive boost to our numbers. We have lots more exciting plans in the works too, so the future for the club is looking bright.

A big warm welcome to Chris and Martin!

Turns out, I’m the new Vice President of Education for White Rose Speakers.

White Rose is a Toastmasters group, that meets on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of each month, at the Jury’s Inn Hotel in the city centre. If you’re interested in improving your communication and leadership skills – why not come down to our Open Meeting on Wednesday 27th February? Or indeed any of our meetings, as guests are always welcome!

Having finished chairing the Leeds Skeptics meeting, I sped up to North Leeds on Wednesday to join the end of White Rose Speakers’ final meeting before Christmas, which, for a holiday celebration, was being held at one of the member’s houses (who happens to have a large house).

The reason I was so keen to get there was that the group had very kindly agreed to do a collection and raffle to raise money for the Humanist Action Groups 2012 Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters.

Once there, they sprung a table topic on me, the song title “Merry Christmas Everyone”, to which I talked about how you can’t call an event this time of year a Christmas event as people get upset, so you have to end up calling it about a dozen different things in the title to keep everyone happy.

We came away with bags of stuff, and plenty of money from the raffle too! Thanks to everyone donated, your support is very much appreciated!

Recently, I made it down to the other “>Toastmasters group in Leeds, to see how it differed from Leeds City.

The answer is not a great deal – there were a few things that they did a little differently, but on the whole, it was the same enjoyable Toastmasters format. The biggest difference is that it is a much smaller club, with maybe around a dozen people there. This is understandable given they were only chartered in June, but is markedly different from Leeds City, the oldest club in The North, which will have around 30 people per meeting.

As they were somewhat short on roles, I was pounced upon on entering and ended up as timekeeper. It was a role I had been a bit nervous about doing, so giving it a go in a smaller club setting was perhaps a gentle introduction.

All in all, I’m not sure whether I will become a regular visitor. It would be a great chance to get round more roles and get more speeches it, but it does mean a time commitment of one evening every week.