Rob was our toastmaster tonight and opened our meeting with a quote from Benjamin Franklin “We are not guaranteed happiness – just the pursuit of it.” Something to consider when we are all thinking what we are entitled to in this life.
Swarna was our timer and kept our meeting on track.
Janice P. gave us the joke about the Elephant and three blind men – perceptions matter.
Emancipation – the act or process of freeing someone from the restraint, control or power of another. A very appropriate word considering that February is Black History Month. The word of the day was brought to us by our word master and grammarian – Yvette.
Trishla was our first speaker of the night and it was her first speech – the icebreaker from the Competent Communication manual – it is always a great thing to get to know our new members and learn about them. Trishla spoke on her hobbies and her favorite books.
Tim P., our second speaker, doing his second speech from the Competent Communication manual spoke on goals and how to achieve them – reminding us to be specific in the documentation and pursuit of our goals.
Neal Marsh gave us a speech from the Better Speaker Series that Toastmasters created and it was entitled “Take the terror out of Talk” – Neal’s speech reminded us of all the things that we can to do help ourselves remain calm and focused while speaking in front of people. The speech also reminded us that practice in any endeavor makes that endeavor better and public speaking is no exception.
Our Table topics master was Dave Wheeler – he challenged us with interesting questions meant to help us to learn to handle impromptu speaking challenges better. The table topics were amusing and helped everyone to have an opportunity to practice our fast thinking and speaking.
The evaluation portion of the meeting progressed with Janice P. giving Trishla some pointers on how to improve her speech. Janice B. gave Tim P. some important feedback on the content and presentation of his speech. Finally, Dave Wheeler reviewed Neal Marsh’s presentation of the Better Speaking Series Module with some suggestions for Neal for the next time he presents this speech.
Swarna then gave us our timing report so that we all knew how we had handled each section of the meeting.
Yvette let us know where our verbal crutches came into play and how to improve them by making us aware that we were using them.
The meeting then adjourned to the snack table for some after meeting discussions and enjoyment of the snacks provided by Rob.
Our next meeting is on February 15, 2010 and we hope you can join us!!
