What is around the corner?

Today's Toastmasters meeting started out like all the rest.  After some of the roles were filled, the meeting started, pretty much on time.  We went through our introductions trying to use the word of the day.  This is when I knew we were in for a little challenge.  You see, the word of the day was the South African word Ubuntu.  A word used to describe the allegiances and relationships with each other.  We are all individuals but are influenced by those we interact with.  We are all individuals, at the same time we are community.  We were all able to use the word in our introductions, if only to re-iterate the definition.  The Grammarian reported that we weren't able to use the word at any other time.  A tough challenge to say the least.

The speaking portion of the meeting also progressed as expected.  Two presentations were made.  Meg completed project number 3 in the Competent Communicator manual and talked to us about the joy of attending live performances.  Richard presented the last speech in his High Performance Leadership program and told us the results of his project and some of the lessons learned.  Both of these presentations along with their evaluations were well prepared and delivered.

Rathann, our Vice President of Education, who always has a trick or two up his sleeve, was the Table Topics Master.  This is when the second challenge was revealed.  He asked us all to indicate if we believed social media was a good thing or not.  He then picked two members that were for and two that were against social media.  The four individuals were then asked to the front of the room to participate in a mini debate.  The twist however, was that the team for social media had to argue against it and the team against social media had to argue for.  This mini debate was very interesting as well as entertaining.

So you can see, Toastmaster meetings follow a prescribed format that might seem routine, but there will always be something to learn and often there will be a twist along the way.  Why not stop in for a meeting and see what excitement will be revealed around the next corner.