It was a bona fide prodigious meeting indeed. This is the turning point of our club activities as we had 9 members joined from different locations with full of diversity. Kaoru san joined from Germany, Naoki san from Chiba, Miyuki san from Hachioji, Yoshio san from Akishima, Bruce san from Hiroshima, Mikiko san from Tokushima, Asami san from Kurume, Drian from Kawasaki and me from Denver, US.
Kaoru san has been in Stuttgart since last year and she ever a toastmaster in Tokyo. She was looking for any opportunities to enjoy toastmasters activities and tried to join our meeting. Naoki san is actually a ACS toastmaster and had been a toastmaster in Hong Kong and India for more than four years. He is active in other clubs such as East Kobe TMC and Tokyo TMC. TM Bruce, our member, is from Hiroshima and he has been in Japan for more than 12 years. He had worked in Army for quite long and lived in Korea too and now he is an English instructor. Miyuki san joined her three times in our meeting after busy work from Hachioji. Yoshio san just joined our meeting as his second time after finishing his work as a dentist. He joined from his office. Asami san, our founding member, also joined from her Kurume home. Mikiko san had a little challenge to join the meeting in first half due to microphone setting. Finally she could join the meeting as her second time. She is a strong promoter of our club and she is already one of our Promoter Seven. TM Drian joined from his office with professional audio system as the prepared speaker. He added fun and interactive atmosphere as always. I joined from Denver, CO, while my business trip.
Asami san introduced the word of the day today. It was "Prodigious", which means remarkably or impressively great in extent, size, or degree. Actually this meeting was prodigious. Asami san always brings us a good word of the day from her proficiency as English teacher. The prepared speech was from TM Drian, project 9, "Get the groove back." When he announced the title, TM Bruce pointed out that it related to music and it hit the nails on the head. The story was related to his experience of some live act and the message was so impressive. We need to continue the challenges and should not give up the trials. It was encouraging speech to all of us.
Next, we had table topic session with the theme of "challenge". All the questions were actually challenging, however all the members delivered fantastic speeches and shared their experiences positively. All stories were impressive as if following hero's journey. No one went over the time allowance, which was another excellent result.
Kaoru san; 1:55, the best table topic speaker 4. How did you overcome your challenge? Any example to share? Naoki san; 1:26 7. Do you like challenges? And why do you think so? Miyuki san; 2:28 3. What was the biggest challenge so far in your life? Yoshio san; 1:29 8. What do you want to challenge this year? Bruce san; 1:40 1. What was your challenge in business last year? Mikiko san; 1:21 2. What was your challenge in family last year? Asami san; 2:23 6. What do you see the biggest challenge in this era? Drian san; 2:30 5. Do you have any challenge that you cannot overcome no matter how hard you try?
And thanks to Naoki san, we could have evaluation session. Naoki san delivered direct and straight-forward evaluation to Drian's speech, which is also encouraging. Online speech delivery has some challenges such as less interactions and eye contacts. And it looks a great opportunity for us to train ourselves to deliver speeches.
Guest comments are all positive and we could see that our operation has been improved at certain level from the feedback. Now our meetings can offer almost the same atmosphere as the face-to-face regular meetings. After having some struggles and improvements, we can operate smoothly and stably by maintaining open and friendly atmosphere. Happy to hear that Yoshio san will join our club and we are increasing the memberships. Mikiko san is promoting our club to her Division G. Our momentum has come. The next meeting will be held on February 7th. Looking forward to meeting you all.