August 12, 2014

Post date: Sep 7, 2014 3:33:44 AM

Hello Honored Toastmasters and Guests,

Here’s the recap of today’s auspicious (the word of the day) meeting:

Attendees:

13 Members - 2 Guests: Michael and Bruce. Michael decided to join our club. Hooray!

Richard, our Sergeant-at-Arms for the day, started the meeting on time and Harry, our President, called it to order. Maki read the club’s mission statement—her first role as a club member and she is getting ready for her second role for next week!

Ivy was the Toastmaster and called for Harry to give the Speech Tip of the Day.

Harry continued with the series on How to Captivate the Audience’s Attention. He shared with us a powerful tool we can add to our speeches: SILENCE. As long as silence is in the right place, it can make our speeches more effective. He demonstrated this technique by putting on his poet hat and reciting the poem “A Raising in the Sun.”

Erica, then, gave us the Thought of the day. She shared with us three quotes about success from very well-known people—Winston Churchill, Maya Angelou, and Thomas Edison. The lesson is that success is not absolute because at the end of the day we define what success means to us. Erica used the word of the day.

Dana did Project #5 from the Competent Communication manual. The title of her speech (5-7 min) was “Your Body Speaks.” She used a mnemonic device to tell us how to enhance our speeches by balancing harmony in our bodies in order to feel centered. This device she used is the acronym STANCE:

Strong

Tranquil

Alignment

Natural Expression

Connection

Ease

Dana also used the word of the day.

Richard was Dana’s speech evaluator and he commented on the parts he liked about the speech and gave Dana recommendations for improvement.

The second prepared speech (25-30 min) was given by Dolores. She shared with us the second part of her presentation “Eight Keys to Getting a Job in any Market.” Her speech demonstrated the power of networking and how we can use LinkedIn, the social networking service, to enhance that power. She also shared with us a striking statistic: 80% of jobs are found through referrals.

Nannette was Dolores' speech evaluator. Nannette pointed out the parts of the speech she enjoyed the most and provided Dolores with feedback for improvement. Besides evaluating Dolores’ speech, Nannette reminded all us to bring our Competent Leader manuals to make sure we get credit for doing the roles on the agenda.

Ah-Counter Noel, Grammarian Ryan, and Timer Karthik, shared with us their evaluation reports. They demonstrated that they were listening attentively.

As today’s general evaluator, I summarized the wonderful and auspicious meeting that we had today.

Before Harry adjourned the meeting, we learned that he and Teri will be attending the 2014 Toastmasters International Convention in Kuala Lumpur held in August 20-23. How exciting!!!

This is the recap of today’s meeting in a nutshell.

Thank you very much for reading these notes. Hope to see all of you next week!!!

Best regards,

Fernando Reyes, CC

Vice President - Public Relations