by Jodi Michael Horner
Ever watch an awards show where the recipient thanks their costars and crew by saying they feel honored to be part of such a professional & talented team of players? Parker’s “Talk of the Town” seems to provide that experience for its members. There isn’t a single person in our group who isn’t a key player; even those who don’t say a lot during the meeting contribute to the pulse of what is happening.
Our final official meeting for 2011 was fun and professional as always. The venue changed slightly, we met in a room on the main floor at Southeast Christian Church rather than upstairs in room 203. Many of us commented on how much more “cozy” and welcoming the room felt, although seating was a bit limited. The jury is out as to whether we will pursue the same location again–Madam President?
Eric Dunham, our VP of Education, served as Toastmaster for the evening. I recall his first run at the job several months ago and he did a stunning job on Thursday just as he did that first time. It was an example to me of how jumping in to new roles (and speeches) in the club can seem so big the first time but soon it becomes “routine” or at least more comfortable, which is the way we hope it will be. There’s a reason that we call one of the core manuals “Competent Leadership,” and it’s because Toastmasters produces competent leaders!
We had five excellent speeches on Thursday. It was a great way to sign off the year and anticipate great things to come for 2012!
I started things off with my tenth and final speech of the Competent Communicator series. The topic was “friendship.” I applied some of the points from Bill Morgan’s speech last time regarding practice and prep. For me that meant not feeling like I had to write the perfect speech the first time. I put it “to bed” and mulled it over for a couple of days, then came back to it. I also practiced with the camera that I’d specifically purchased for practicing my speeches. Joanna Knott gave me the advice to do that a few times through. It definitely helped! For any of you who feel reticent to have yourselves taped I would strongly recommend you reconsider! Also, Joanna shared the blurb of a fellow toastmaster that, “There is the speech you write, the speech you rehearse, and the speech you deliver.” That is to say that we mustn’t be obsessed with perfection!
Parker Toastmasters has its own *Youtube page but I inadvertently posted to my own site this week. Here is my speech: Jodi Michael Horner CC #10*
Sandy Marthaler followed with speech number eight from the Competent Communicator series titled, “Controlling Clutter.” Her mnemonic of “SPACE” to help us remember the keys to cleaning up clutter was effective, as was the personal examples she provided–both in words and visuals! S is for “sort,” P is for “purge,” A is for “assign” (a space for the item), C is for “contain” (find a container), and E is for Evaluate the progress/situation to see if any further “SPACE”ing must be done. Video for Sandy’s speech: Sandy Marthaler CC #8*
Joanna Knott shared with us her interpretation of the story of Anne Frank. Joanna’s very personal experience made it all the more touching; she was born in the city of Auschwitz and grew up in Poland. Her family had first-hand experience with WWII and Joanna has been to the actual sites talked about in the book, “the Diary of Anne Frank.” No less touching was Stacy Hayden’s evaluation of Joanna’s speech. This writer believes that nothing is by coincidence and Stacy had just been to the house that Anne Frank’s family had lived in for the two years prior to being taken captive and sent to the concentration camp Auschwitz.
Nikita Kazakov presented a dynamic and funny speech called, “the Physical Art of Charisma.” This speech marked his midway point for the Competent Communicator manual. Nikita demonstrated his point both physically and comically. As always he left the group wondering how many Toastmasters groups he has belonged to in a former life! For Christmas I’d like some of his confidence in a bottle, please. Unfortunately I did not get all of Mr. Krazkov’s speech on video–but I did literally get 15 seconds. Here’s the take: Nikita CC #5*
Bill Morgan continued his Entertaining Speaker series with a speech on camping! It was very humorous and filled with visuals that some of us will always remember, and others perhaps hope to forget! That Finnegan boy will be hard to forget, however…
After the speeches for the evening we moved into the Table Topics, hosted by Joanna. She threw us for a bit of a loop by introducing a fictional story that we were all to build upon. Her first segment was a random comedy so we attempted to follow that path! It turned into a rhapsody of dreams, never to be recreated.
Best Speaker for the night was Joanna Knott.
Best Evaluator was Bruce Ekins.
Best Table Topic was Jodi Michael Horner.
Timer: Martin Cobb
General Evaluator: Bill Bevard
Grammarian: Caroline Nguyen
Vote Counter: Sandy Marthaler
*All video content for speeches at Parker Toastmasters Talk of the Town are recorded and posted with the express permission of the speakers featured in each segment. Speakers who do not wish to be videoed will not be. It is not a requirement for our club but a service we provide to assist in personal and professional development.