Lviv Toastmasters Club in 2-nd half of 2013

Greetings dear toastmasters,

As the eve of a new year's day it is the time to look back at a passing year 2013 and club achievements during the time. 

We are happy to report that second half year of 2013 showed some good progress in a club business - thanks to the dedication and support of our old and new members. We were also supported by local IT companies - a support for which we've very grateful.

A quick summary of our most notable achievements:

• The club was invited to hold meetings at an EPAM company training centre. We express our gratitude to EPAM for the invitation and further support.

• A new officers team has been elected, and now the club finally has a full officers team again.

• Thanks to the enthusiasm of new officers the club has successfully held a local speech contest, or as we call it "Speech Championship". We congratulate Victor Medvedev on winning the contest.

• Statistics for 2-nd half of year 2013 show several significant performance improvements: less meetings cancelled, more prepared speeches were delivered by more speakers, higher number of total participations on roles and higher number of participations per person (i.e. more activity from club members).

Lemberg Toastmasters statistics for First half-year of 2013

Lemberg Toastmasters
First half-year of 2013 statistics

15 meetings 
(on average 5 meetings per 2 months)

3 prepared speeches by 3 speakers
(on average 0.33 speeches per meeting, 0.5 per month, 1 per speaker)
And also 6 mini-speeches by 4 speakers.

21 people were taking roles
Thank you all so much!

112 total roles participations
Including prepared speakers (~7.46 roles per meeting, ~5.33 participations by one person for half-year or ~0.88 per month)

14 viewpoints, 10 table topics, 11 games

Visiting Lemberg toastmasters for one month you'd go to 2 or 3 meetings, possibly hear a prepared speech and certainly hear 1 mini-speech, participate in around 2 viewpoints and table topics, two games, and take a role once. 

In general this half-year was a lot about impromptu speaking and games. Unfortunately, we’re still witnessing a steady decline in club attendance - from more than 200 role participations per half-year in 2011, to 153 in first half-year of 2012, to 137 in second half-year 2012, to 112 this half-year. 

But we had almost two times more games than previous half-year. 

We had three times fewer prepared speeches than previous half-year, but a slight increase in mini-speeches though.

We need to invite new people and increase attendance! This was our imperative for first half-year of 2013, and it remains thus for the second half-year.

Notable standouts
- Most versatile - Ihor Klyuka took 9 different roles!
Everyone else took 7 and less different roles during this half-year.

- Most active - Mykola Makhin took roles 18 times (one or more than one role each meeting).
Ihor Klyuka and Tetiana Povshyk come close with 15 and 14 participations respective.
Everyone else took 12 and less roles during this half-year.

Let's delve into details...

Tasks for semi-humorous TableTopics

Greetings fellows.

Recently I have led some more (semi-)humorous TableTopics, and I'm ready to share some details on that - maybe they'll help you prepare your own TableTopics or re-use those at your club.

For the TableTopic every speaker had to imagine himself or herself as someone who occupies position of a City Mayor or possibly a leader of influential party or political fraction within City Council - any imaginary person that has the power to initiate some major changes within the city (I know that's not exactly realistic, but it's just fine for the sake of TableTopic - after all it had to have some humour in it so noone would get bored (-: ).

The speaker was given a task - a description of certain change that he/she as an influential figure was about to do to the city. He/she had to explain why this change is good for the city and why exactly this thing is his/her top priority for current time. Usually that change was something eccentric, so that the speaker would had to think how to present it in as something beneficial and relevant.

So, here are the tasks (descriptions of aforementioned hypothetical changes to city life) from two recent TableTopics:

TableTopic one:

1. Turn city fountains into a free swimming pools with a hot water working all the year around.