Written by Eric Dunham, VP Education
What an interesting evening we had at the April 26th meeting. Imagine for just a moment, closing a meeting before we ever got started. That’s exactly what happened at our first backwards meeting. Our club president Joanna Knott closed the meeting and thanked everyone for coming before any speeches. Our visitors were a little caught off guard…as were some of our members.
The Toastmaster for the evening was our president, Joanna Knott.
Attendees: Audrey Bolema, Bruce Ekins, Bill Bevard, Bill Morgan, Cole Mayer, Eric Dunham, Nina Minary, Joanna Knott, Alissa Tenorio, Jodi Michael Horner, Martin Cobb, Nikita Kazakov, Sandy Marthaler, Santhi Malasani, and Will O’Brien.
Guests: David Bounds and Marcy Brack – Visitors from Simply Speaking Aurora, CO
Club Business: Bill Morgan provided a great overview of Parker Toastmaster’s Speakers Bureau scheduled to launch in June of 2012. The objective of the speakers bureau to give our members additional opportunity to speak, gain experience and grow. The bureau will also provide the club a great opportunity to expand the club’s name and Toastmaster brand in the Parker community.
Eric Dunham provided an update on the May 17th special event and encouraged volunteers to speak and to provide refreshments for this event. The keynote address will be by Traci Brown, speaker and retired world class cyclist.
Debate night is May 10th the speakers and debate topics are:
Should the driving age be raised to 18? (Will O’Brien and Bill Morgan)
Do adopted children have the right to know their biological parents? (Cole Mayer and Nikita Kazakov)
The Olympics are a waste of money. (Bill Bevard and Sandy Marthaler)
The voting age should be lowered to 16. (Bruce Ekins and Alissa Tenorio
The evenings honors go to (again before any speeches were given):
Best Speech: Jodi Michael Horner
Best Evaluator: Cole Mayer
Best Table Topic: Santhi Malasani
Jodi Michael Horner was the Table Topics Master and changed things up a little. Using the format used at competitions, Jodi asked for three volunteers (Nikita Kazakov, Macy Brack and David Bounds) who were escorted out of the room and then brought in one by one to answer the following question:
“I never thought I’d…”
Nikita – Told about moving to Colorado. His parents loved the weather.
David – Talked about the “poster child” of incompetence. He had us rolling in laughter.
Marcy – Told us about “something from the heart.”
We finally got to the speeches and WOW! They were great.
Martin Cobb (Evaluator: Sandy Marthaler): “I felt like a winner…but they called me a loser.” Martin provided us some recommendations on how to win a speech contest. He leveraged his recent experience at the Areas International Speech Contest. Focus on the “big dawgs” they are worth 50% of the score – structure, organization and supporting details. Focus less on the “piddly pooches”; they are only worth 20% of your score – purpose and audience.
Jodi Michael Horner (Evaluator: Will O’Brien): “Do you have what it takes.” Jodi provided the audience pointers to consider when participating in pageant. In a serious but very humorous and entertaining way Jodi told how to focus on: shoes, swimsuit, evening gown, illusions (let’s just say, accessories that we really don’t see or know about) and attitude. You must have attitude to win!
Bill Bevard (evaluator: Cole Mayer): “How to say it.” Bill walked us through several examples of how to use fewer words in a speech and get to the point. The ideas and examples Bill shared with us are certain to help speakers get to the point and win the audience’s attention.
Bruce Ekins (evaluator: Alissa Tenorio): “We need to find a way”. This was Bruce’s third project from the Competent Communicator manual. It was very insightful speech were Bruce shared with us is disappointment is a number of recent articles, political in nature, that never really offered solutions; only partisan and diversionary views. Bruce suggests we give value to articles that spelled clearly a real problem and then clearly defines a solution. “What we need to do is….” Do NOT give credit or value to articles that are based on ideology, blame the other side (no problem is created by only one side), and an article trying to persuade the readers to take a side.
Roles:
Toastmaster – Joanna Knott
Grammarian and Ah-counter – Bill Bevard
Vote Counter – Santhi Malasani
Timer – Martin Cobb
Table Topics Master – Jodi Michael Horner
General Evaluator – Bill Morgan
Parker Toastmasters is honored to announce our newest member Audrey Bolema. Also we are honored to have Santhi Malasani become officially inducted with the reading of the Toastmaster’s Promise.
It was a great meeting with great speeches and great people in attendance. Our next club meeting is May 10, 2012.