March 11, 2014

Post date: Mar 27, 2014 7:20:00 PM

Club Meeting Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Attendees: 12 Members and 1 Guest (Jerry Lin)

General Evaluator: Doug Wheaton

Today’s meeting began on time at 12 noon with Richard Tatunay introducing the presiding officer, VP Membership Fumiko Tajima. Fumiko called the meeting to order and turned the meeting over to Toastmaster of Day, Dana Conley. After assigning roles for people who were unable to make it, Richard volunteered to read the club mission statement.

At today’s meeting, several new and relatively new members volunteered to accept roles. Their involvement was inspirational for the other attendees. Dolores served as the Ah-Counter, Richard was the Grammarian, and Nanette volunteered for her first time as the Timer. As General Evaluator, the following is my summary of today’s meeting.

The word of the day was “Froward”, meaning ‘habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition.’ Several speakers found clever ways to work this unfamiliar word into their speeches.

Today’s tip of the day was delivered by Harry, who gave suggestions on how to encourage audience engagement and involvement by beginning a speech with a participatory question (e.g. How many of us like to go to the dentist?). By inquiring about common experiences from an audience, they become conspiratory partners to the speaker and can be instantly engaged in the subject. From there, Harry recommended that speakers can segue into a speech topic that draws on a similar feeling related to the introductory question.

Terry presented the Thought of the Day, telling us about a book she has recently read that encourages us to ‘live a life of excellence’. This concept, along with the concept of ‘live to give,’ related to our recent discussion of Integrity: always do the right thing even when nobody is watching. This presentation clocked in at 1:28.

Ivy presented the humor of the day, sharing a funny joke about a child asking his dad and mom about where babies come from. The speech took 0:40. If you want to hear the whole joke, ask Ivy.

Unlike last week’s meeting, today’s meeting had three speeches, so we had to forgo Table Topics to give enough time for the prepared speeches.

First up was Fernando, who gave us a preview of the speech he will give at this weekend’s speech contest. “Survivor of a Mental Illness” uses research sources to support the topic and informs listeners how to protect themselves from animal bites and rabies. Fernando’s entertaining speech took 5:58. Margaret‘s 2:46 evaluation provided useful feedback for Fernando’s competition practice.