Greetings!
Attached is the spring edition of our club newsletter highlighting what has happened over the last quarter.
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Ignite! your Tuesday evening
What is Ignite!?
Ignite! is speaking for five minutes, with 20 slides. The slides move every 15 seconds, whether the speaker is ready or not. It is interesting, challenging and fun.
As a burgeoning speaker, you are learning more about the craft every day. Seeing how others do it and learning from them is part of your process, inside AND outside of a Toastmasters meeting.
Our own Michele O’Brien-Rose gave us an Ignite! speech at a recent meeting, and it was wonderful to hear about her own Ignite! experience.
Ignite! is Tuesday June 21st at:
Oriental Theatre
4335 West 44th Avenue
Denver, CO
Doors open 6pm, speaking starts 7pm
Here is a list of speakers and subjects:
| Speaker | Speech |
| Erin Ek | I See London, I See France |
| Joseph Labrecque | Zombies, Vampires and Babies – What You NEED to Know!! |
| Tim Nicklas | Pittsburghese: A Dialectical Primer |
| Kia Ruiz | It’s Just Biology: Why We Do What We Do |
| David Pennington | Totally Wasted – Why You Should Always Remember to Bring a Towel |
| Kelly Tidd | Really? You’re a Writer? Really?! |
| Erika Napoletano | No More Redheaded Bastard Stepchildren: The Demise of the Recessive Gene |
| Tim White | Joys and Dangers of 10 Hobbies You May Not Have Tried |
| Brian Timoney | The Last Secret Shame: A Cultural History of Debt |
| Tim Davids | MORE tips for Surviving Bear Attacks |
| Jon Rossi | My First Tattoo and What I Should Have Done |
| Jennifer Duensing | How to Live on an Island |
| Eric Fickes | I Wish You Weren’t So Dumb About Computers |
My New “Favorite Thing”
Oprah does an annual show about her favorite (material) things. She rhapsodizes and then furnishes each of her audience members (e.g. diamond earrings, iPods, books, etc.) with her new “favorite things.” In a way I’ve been feeling a bit like Oprah lately since I have a new “favorite thing”: the Parker Toastmasters! If I could I would give a Toastmaster’s membership to each of my friends. Why?
The group is cordially professional. I confess that its official nature has been a bit challenging for me since I’ve been “home with the kids” for four years, but it provides a refreshing sense of momentum that can’t be manufactured by reading a self-help book. I am grateful for the structure and see it as perfect for helping me meet my personal goals in joining the group. I find myself feeling humbled by my lack of refinement–and I haven’t even given a speech yet! But I’m embracing the the chisel of maturation. Ouch!
The Toastmasters of Parker are a diverse group and although I’m usually a front-row dweller, here I like to sit in the middle since I have much to learn about being a club member. I’ve noticed the diversity in age, gender, and career types. It’s like being given an opportunity for personal growth on a silver platter, quality folks with the same desire to grow, willing to take the stumbles to get there. This is clearly the type of group from which to learn.
It’s also evident that this group has a cohesiveness borne from time and experience together. Yet as I read through the manuals (which I got in the mail after a little over two weeks from the date of joining) I see an air-tight system. It’s impressive. Not only do the manuals outline the speeches required to achieve various levels of accomplishment but they also delineate the roles and mores in Toastmasters. My experience with groups that attempt to define a manner in which to bond is that they feel contrived. This group does not. I don’t know what else to say about that except that, as an educator, the curriculum looks consummate and thorough; I find myself wondering why I don’t know more people in Toastmasters. It seems like the best-kept secret in town!
Congratulations
Today two of Parker Toastmasters’ officers officially received their MBA degrees from Phoenix University.
Please congratulate Joanna Knott, VP Education, and Nina Minary, VP Membership, for their achievement.
Parker Days
Parker Toastmasters will be at Parker Days this weekend, along with the Lunch Out Loud and Spirited Speakers club. Lunch Out Loud deserves credit for initiating this move, to cut costs, and also to give the 100,000 or so people expected to attend this weekend more choices among the area clubs.
Come on by and see what these clubs have to offer you!
June 9 Meeting
What an excellent meeting tonight, with excellent turnout!
Bruce Ekins, Nina Minary, Paul Johnson, Jodi Horner, Samantha Tino, Michele O’Brien-Rose, Kaitlyn Wolf, Kellen Stephens, Michelle DeVore, Eric Dunham, Joanna Knott, Debbie Hall and Bill Morgan participated in tonight’s meeting.
Let’s all welcome new members Debbie Hall, Bruce Ekins, Samantha Tino, Kaitlyn Wolf and Kellen Stephens! It’s great to have you here.
Eric Dunham and Joanna Knott were our speakers tonight, with Sandy Marthaler and Bruce Ekins as their evalators.
Michele O’Brien-Rose was our Table Topics Master. We all enjoyed Michele’s use of randomly selected Beatles songs as a great way to evoke wonderful memories. Samantha Tino gave the best Table Topic while Kaitlyn Wolf earned an Honorable Mention.
Debbie Hall was our timer, Paul Johnson was our grammarian/ah-counter, and Kellen Stephens was our Vote Counter. Michelle DeVore did a great job as our General Evaluator.
We are looking forward to promoting our club at the upcoming Parker Days this weekend as we share a booth with the Lunch Out Loud and Spirited Speakers clubs!
Finally, it was an auspicious occasion as the club officially welcomed incoming President Joanna Knott. The club is in great hands for 2011-12!
Social Media and LinkedIn
When this website went through reconceptualization and redesign, there were many unknowns and uncertainties.
Thankfully, the worst unknowns were about abandoning a familiar website and taking a leap of faith into the foggy void of installing and using WordPress. Now that we’re up and running for nearly three months now, we’re losing our training wheels and embarking on an interesting journey with lots of twists and turns.
Now our problems are more complex ones to address. Questions such as:
- Can we translate the enthusiasm and esprit de corps felt after every meeting into our writing about it?
- How do we reach a larger audience?
- How do we make this website relevant and useful to our members and the Toastmasters community at large?
With Social Media such a buzzword these days, I wanted to take advantage of WordPress’ more advanced plugins to push our postings to the world at large – where our Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn contacts can see what we’re about and where we are headed. Let’s not forget that WordPress includes comments with every post, a common feature of blogging platforms these days.
It was a scattershot experiment at best and so far here is what is interesting.
From where do we get most comments and responses?
Not Facebook. Not Twitter. Not comments within our blog.
LinkedIn. Specifically LinkedIn groups:
- Toastmasters International — District 26
- Toastmasters International
- The Official Toastmasters International Members Group
- Parker Toastmasters
It’s all so obvious, don’t you see. We have a captive audience to share our posts with those groups. Experienced Toastmasters with a breadth of personal and professional experience have weighed in on many of our posts to provide insight and new thoughts.
That’s not the entire story.
Did you know that a member of District 26 is a Brand Ambassador with the Toastmasters’ International rebranding coming later this summer? Meet Brenda Smull, DTM. A member of the District 26 group, and an active member of Toastmasters in the Denver area.
Want to follow threads involving technology and website advice? Meet Matthew Kleinosky, a Toastmaster from Toronto Canada. You will find him on the The Official Toastmasters International Members Group.
We all have a lot to learn in our journey as Toastmasters. What is amazing to me is that in just a few months of getting these posts out, that I’ve discovered there is an active and engaged online community working on important and relevant topics that can help you in your role as a Member or Officer. I strongly encourage you to join them to enhance your Toastmasters experience.
After you sign in to www.linkedin.com, be sure to search for the following groups, and then join them.
- Toastmasters International — District 26
- Toastmasters International
- The Official Toastmasters International Members Group
- Parker Toastmasters
You’ll be glad you did!
Toastmaster of the Year
Parker Toastmasters members – please take time from your busy day and vote for this year’s Toastmaster of the Year for Parker Toastmasters.
Your selection criteria should consider:
Overall Qualities
Enthusiasm
Dedication
Helping Others
Toastmasters qualities
Achievement of any Toastmasters Awards
Active Participation in Roles During Meetings
Participation in Club Contests, including roles as Contest Chairman, Judge
Mentoring of New and Fellow Members
Speechcraft
New Blogroll and Links Coming to Our Site
We are always looking for ways to enhance our online presence, and we are looking for your suggestions for blogs and links to add to our site.
The idea is to bring to you what innovative thinkers and organizations have to offer. A blogroll is a way for you to see the last 2 or 3 posts from each blog, in order for you to scan and find any articles of interest.
Appropriate blogs and links would include links from professional organizations you support, blogs from innovative thinkers and speakers, links to non-profit organizations, links to interesting books or articles, YouTube links from speeches you like, etc. Think of this as something like a Table Topics on the internet, offering you interesting ideas to ponder and new thoughts to challenge you.
Please email your links and blogs to Bill Morgan.
These will be posted to a Blogroll/Links page coming soon to our website!
May 26th Meeting
It was a very good meeting, with Sandy Marthaler as our Toastmaster for the first time! Sandy gave us a great theme with “New Beginnings”. Sandy is a substitute teacher, and her talk about how this time of year and her students provides us time to reflect upon both the past and future was well-received by an appreciative group.
We had lots of guests tonight! Thanks to Debbie Hall, Michelle DeVore, Samantha Tino, Jodi Horner, Kaitlyn Wolf and Kellen Stephens for visiting us, as well as letting us learn a little more about themselves.
We had three speeches tonight. Joanna Knott helped us know more about CRM software with a strong presentation called CRM Software Selection . Bill Morgan gave us a glimpse into what traffic cops really want us to do in Late One Night. And Sandy Marthaler helped us to understand more about why it is important to Apologize.
Bruce Ekins did a great job as our Grammarian/Ah-Counter and his Word of the Day was “Transitions”.
Joanna Knott finished up the meeting as our General Evaluator and finished up with club business.
Our best speech evaluator tonight was Michelle DeVore, and our best speaker was Bill Morgan.
Let’s celebrate as we have four new members! We are proud to say that Samantha Tino, Kellen Stephens, Jodi Horner and Kaitlyn Wolf are now members of Parker Toastmasters!