At Harbourside Toastmasters #1843 today we had one speech from Pierre Urier-Cattoire, an MBA student from France who has been in the city for one  year.    Pierre is a member at Saint John Toastmasters #1479 and like me visited Harbourside over the summer.   He completed his tenth speaking project which makes him eligible for the Competent Communicator (CC) award.    After ten speeches from the CC manual a Toastmaster is eligible for this recognition.  The learning plan with the tenth speech is to inspire, motivate and capture the feelings of the audience.   Pierre spoke about his perspective as a short-term visitor of positives in Saint John and some things we can do to evolve further.    Not surprisingly Pierre had a very Eurpoean viewpoint towards quality of life.   I agree with his perspective on desiring to see more activity, more stores open later etc.

I led the Table Topics session in which people have to address a question or comment they haven't prepared to speak about. The theme for the session today was about the royal baby (Kate and William) who is due any day now.  This 'news' item seems to dominate print, tv, and web based media.   People had fun with the topics and spoke about whether this is really news, the influence of Britain versus the USA on our media, the economic impact this birth will have in Great Britain, etc.     It was light, but quite passionately discussed.

There were no correct answers to these questions - all were oriented towards opinions and observations.

Harbourside meets every Wednesday of the year in Brunswick Square office tower from 12:15-1:15.

http://harbourside.toastmastersclubs.org/

Jim K


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