March 25, 2014

Post date: Mar 27, 2014 7:33:55 PM

Hi everyone,

We had a wonderful meeting this past Tuesday! Margaret and many who arrived early, helped set up the room in a different arrangement facing the Sitting Room. The meeting was also different from our typical meeting in that we had a guest speaker, Casie Petersen who come to practice a speech she will be giving at her Area Contest. Seven of our club members gave Casie some very specific and constructive feedback after her speech. Casie was referred to our club by Area E-1 Governor Lionnel Yamentou. In addition to Casie, we had a visitor from TI, Trenton Berry, and Linda Le from HID Global. Trenton will be the fourth TI staff member to join our club! There were a total of 15 people at the meeting.

Extra bonuses: Faye who joined our club last week gave her Ice Breaker speech and Dolores brought her first place ribbon she won recently at the Area A-4 International Speech contest! Dolores is also a member of the Zingers Club.

Gavel Time

Our meeting started at 12:03 pm after Margaret reminded us it was past 12 noon. Margaret gathered the audience, invited those still networking to be seated and introduced our Club president Eric to call the meeting to order. Eric greeted the guests and asked them to introduce themselves and Ryan volunteered to read the Club Mission Statement in place of Sohrab who was absent. Ryan also volunteered to be the meeting Toastmaster in place of Fernando who was also absent. I would have nominated Ryan for the Spark Plug Award if we had one!

Agenda Review and Appetizers

Ryan asked those with a role to describe their role and Margaret shared the Word of the Day, "Knackered" meaning tired or exhausted. Ryan reminded those who brought their CL manuals to exchange their manuals and we went right into the appetizers: Speech Tip, Thought and Humor of the Day.

• I continued with the series of tips on how to captivate an audience in the first 10 seconds of your speech. The tip was to use a short anecdote tied to your main message. I gave an example by sharing the "13 birds on a telephone line" anecdote.

• Doug shared a very inspirational thought on coping with change by examining and understanding yourself so you can adopt to change and look forward to it.

• Ivy shared a hilarious one liner on how you know for sure you are overweight when you step on a scale.

Prepared Speeches

Dolores was the evaluator in place of Richard for Faye's first speech project and shared the objective of the speech project. Faye delivered a very dynamic and energetic speech on the importance of building bridges and making connections by steering clear of gadgets that disconnect you from people. She encouraged us to focus on delivering the message when telling a story. Be aware of the huge potential within you and seek to serve others.

Casie delivered a very inspiring speech about the power of words. Her speech was filled with excellent stories and visual aids to help bring home the message to use words from various mediums to deliver a message that makes a lasting impact.

Evaluations

Dolores did an outstanding job providing a very specific and positive evaluation of Faye's speech and made an excellent suggestion to focus on the objective of the Ice Breaker which is to introduce yourself to the audience. Trenton, Dolores, Eric, Faye, Sonny, Ryan and Doug all did an excellent job of giving Casie some very specific and constructive feedback. The Ah-Counter, Grammarian and Timer: Nannette, Margaret and Eric all demonstrated great listening skills by giving a detailed report for each speaker. No Table Topics session was scheduled, but the Round Robin evaluation gave seven people an opportunity to give a short extemporaneous speech. Ryan did a superb job of moderating the meeting and keeping us on track!

Overall, we had an excellent meeting with many people participating and enjoying the experience--an experience that will add to their personal growth as an effective communicator and leader. A number of people commented they enjoy occasionally varying the meeting format. We ended the meeting on time and took a group photo with Dolores and her first place ribbon!

Photos

Click here to check out the photos from the meeting.

Regards,

Harry