The JOTTER…Coffs Harbour Toastmasters news letter
And that was Saturday.
Back to the Bowl-o.
Last Saturday Area 29 Contests were held at Park Beach Bowls Club in Coffs. What a great venue! A quiet, carpeted room, with picture windows onto the dune, and a delicious sandwich lunch, all for a very modest $5 entry fee. About 30 people attended from the 4 clubs between Grafton and Nambucca Valley, and this included judges and District level officials from outside Area. Top quality speeches as usual. Hats off to the dynamic Dysons for winning first place in the 4 categories – James in International and Evaluation, and Janet in Humorous and Table Topics. Hats off also to all who contested or officiated, and especially the 3 who left at lunchtime after competing or chairing. These 3 had apparently fitted the contest into already very busy lives.
The mix.
It was the usual mix. Old timers showing their experience and newbies learning the ropes. There were more than a few who doubled up. James and Deebee, for example, after competing, put on different hats and came back as Chair or Sergeant at Arms. Similarly Donna and Paolo seemed to be everywhere as Timers, Counters and Sergeant at Arms. Special thanks to Kay Simmons who drove up from Port Mac to deliver a test speech for the Evaluation contestants to evaluate.
Pathways down the track.
Justyn Phillips took the opportunity (as a District90 Pathways Ambassador) to remind us yet again that Pathways, the new Education Program, will start in December. The current program is a basic manual of 10 projects, followed by a choice of advanced modules which cater for special interests. in Pathways, on the other hand, you choose one of 10 specialised paths at the outset. Pathways is already rolling out elsewhere in the Toastmasters universe and an interesting statistic is that the most popular path (20%) has been ‘project management’, followed by ‘giving presentations’ and ‘mentoring’, and then the remaining 7 paths are more or less on par.