Let’s pretend you’re sitting on a plane and relaxed, waiting to hear what the dinner will or movie will be for your journey by jet aircraft across the country. What do you do when you find out that the person who is supposed to be flying the plane isn’t in the cockpit? You turn to your your experienced co-pilot and flight crew until she arrives.
Such was the scene last Thursday when the scheduled Toastmaster, Jodi Michael Horner (gulp–me!), ran into a bit of traffic. President Joanna Knott started things off with her classic professional demeanor and threw the ball to Immediate Past President and current Treasurer Bill Morgan. I state his titles to highlight his leadership experience which helped to operate the “plane” in a smooth manner.
Bill Morgan bumped up his planned presentation to the beginning of the meeting and delivered a 15-minute speech on Giving Effective Feedback and its importance. Everyone, it seemed, was taking notes about this key element to public speaking–and all areas of the learning experience, for that matter. A most useful and appreciated presentation.
At this point the Toastmaster had arrived. But what do you do when your “pilot” gets into the cockpit only to discover she has forgotten her flight plan? Once again you thank your lucky stars that a member of the flight crew has a copy of the “flight plan” i.e. Agenda saved on his laptop which was just used to present. Thank you Bill Morgan for helping me with that situation! The Agenda was projected onto the screen for the duration of the meeting.
I kicked off the remaining proceedings by sharing the theme for the evening, “Happy UnBirthday.” It was no one’s birthday but we visited the idea of our birthday by hearing about items from respective members’ birthdays. Martin Cobb shared about his cup, Cole showed a photo of himself with his brother and father, Michelle DeVore showed us her July birthstone ring, a ruby, and provided some very interesting insight to the ruby and its lore. Eric Dunham talked about his bronzed baby shoes, Sandy Marthaler brought a giant sea shell vase to represent the fact that she’d been born in Puerto Rico, and I (Jodi) brought my birthstone ring as well, a blue topaz for December.
We proceeded with the planned speeches for the evening. All three speakers had already achieved the Competent Communicator Awards so each speech was from an Advanced Speaker Series. Eric Dunham went first and gave a first-rate presentation on Cold Calling. His lovely assistant Michelle DeVore acted as the recipient of the call and together they showed us the best way to make a cold call successful. His evaluator, Bruce Ekins, had experience with making cold calls and so was especially interested in this speech!
Our second speaker was Bill Morgan. He read ancient poetry and many of us were moved by his rendering from “Greek and Latin Classics.” Jyoti Jain gave her first-ever evaluation for the club on Bill’s presentation; she expressed her delight and made many positive remarks.
The third and final speaker for the evening was Joanna Knott. Her presentation was titled, “Let’s Talk Trash” (possibly her 10-year-old’s idea inspired by the song with a similar title.) Joanna used projected visuals to help explain the importance of “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle,” and encouraged everyone to apply the principles to their lives. Eric Dunham evaluated Joanna and complimented her use of graphics and the judicious use of print in her slides.
Martin Cobb then stepped in to facilitate the Table Topics. Keeping in line with the theme for the evening: Funny Baby Stories! It seemed the group was ready for the direction of baby excretions and projections–enough said on that! Six of the attendees got up to share their stories of their children or their own baby experiences.
Vote counting concluded (thank you Joanna for stepping up to that role) and the results were:
Best Evaluator: Eric Dunham
Best Table Topic: Bruce Ekins
Best Speech: Joanna Knott
Roles for the evening were held by:
Timer: Irini Dobeck
Grammarian/Ah Counter: Sandy Marthaler
Table Topic Master: Martin Cobb
General Evaluator: Eric Dunham
As a final note, Joanna Knott’s speech included some great links to visit in order to help cut down on your junk mail. They are listed below.
http://www.container-recycling.org/facts/all/
http://ecocycle.org/ecofacts
https://ecocycle.catalogchoice.org/howitworks
http://www.wm.com/residential.jsp