Parker Toastmasters had another fun and educational meeting on November 10, 2011.
Caroline Nguyen was our Toastmaster and did a superb job of navigating us through the meeting.
Twelve Members attending were: Caroline Nguyen , Joanna Knott, Bill Morgan, Bill Bevard, Sandy Marthaler, Jodi Michael Horner, Jyoti Jain, Bruce Ekins, Eric Dunham, Kellan Stephens, Michelle DeVore, and Nina Minary. There were no guests.
This was Caroline’s first time as Toastmaster and she started out talking about the fear of doing things and how we can all conquer our fears. I think she conquered her fear tonight in an excellent manner. A good reminder for us all to “just do it” instead of procrastinating!
Jodi Michael Horner delivered the first speech of the evening. It was # 8 out of the Competent Communicator Manual entitled “Do you Speak My Language?”. She did an top-notch job of explaining that we all have one primary love language and a love tank that needs to be filled on a regular basis. She explained each of the five languages — Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Physical Touch, and Acts of Service and gave examples of each. She also had visual representations for each. If you missed this speech, you can still learn about these love languages by reading Gary Chapman’s book “The Five Love Languages”. Thanks Jodi for reminding us all the importance of working on our relationships and knowing our loved ones enough to love them how they need to be loved. It made me want to spend more time with my husband since quality time is his love language. She also told us of a website to go to to take a quiz: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/assessments/love/
Bill Morgan gave the second speech. His was Project # 5 from the Advanced Manual: The Entertaining Speaker. He richly entertained us all with his photos and stories from his recent business trip to Ireland. Bill just returned from spending five weeks in Dublin, Ireland for Home Office Training related to his new job. He stated he could not adequately tell us all he experienced in words. I think it was a heart and soul changing experience for him for sure. Although he really missed his wife and boys, I think he truly enjoyed his Ireland experience. After giving a few statistics on Ireland, he mainly educated us on two spots in Ireland history– The Black 47 and The Irish Empire. We all learned a lot from these two stories. He concluded with admonishing us all to travel — whether it be physically or mentally and when we do, to be sure to tell others. Thanks Bill for sharing your wonderful adventure with us. It made me want to book a flight to Ireland in the very near future!
Speech number three was given by Bruce Ekins. This was Speech #2 for him out of the CC manual. His speech was doing a book review of the book “Switch – How to Change Things when Change is Hard”. He did an excellent job of motivating us to read this book! He talked about the two metaphors of the Writer and the Elephant and how we each have them residing in us. The Writer is our rational side and the Elephant is our emotional side. He told us that we need the two sides to work together. He gave us lots of examples and educated us on how we need to appeal to both sides in order to make important changes in our lives. He highly recommended this book as a must read for anyone struggling with change. Well, Bruce I have put the book on order at the library and look forward to reading it. Thanks for the excellent and educational stories and insights.
After the three speeches, we had our Table Topics Master Kellan Stephens lead us in sharing our favorite part about the upcoming holiday Thanksgiving. All twelve of us shared in our likes and dislikes and special traditions etc. Thanks Kellan for another fun sharing time for all!
Next on the agenda was the evaluating of the speeches by the 3 evaluators.
Bill Bevard evaluated Jodi saying she keeps getting better and better and how the content of her speech was delivered in an excellent manner. Even though there was an equipment failure she handled it very well.
Joanna Knott got to evaluate Bill and jokingly said it was now her time for revenge. She said how some of us all were able to follow his trip these past five weeks on Facebook and how enjoyable it was to hear his stories and see his photos of his Ireland adventure.
Kellan Stephans evaluated Bruce and emphasized how much he enjoys hearing from Bruce and really enjoys the rich quality of his voice — he had no suggestions for improvement and said he very much liked the flow of the speech.
Reports were given by our Timer (Eric Dunham), Grammarian (Bill Bevard), and our General Evaluator (Bill Morgan). Bill said we had another excellent meeting and emphasized the participation and enthusiasm as being the keys to a great meeting. He did say that we needed to work on always starting on time. We were about 4 minutes late.
Finally, Joanna Knott was our vote counter and reported the tie for best speech was Bruce Ekins and Jodi Horner. The tie for best table topics was Sandy Marthaler and Kellan Stephens. Joanna Knott was voted best evaluator.
Joanna then conducted some club business. She first reminded us about our next meeting being next Thursday, November 17, because of the Thanksgiving holiday. She said we are still trying to decide on meeting dates for December — either it will be Dec 1 and Dec 15 or Dec 1 and Dec 8. She will let us all know. She said we needed and date and a venue for our Parker Toastmaster Christmas Party.
Eric was next in some club business. He reminded us that we have all come a long way in our speech making and delivering. He reminded us of the importance of not rushing through the manual but taking the necessary time to prepare and practice each speech. He also mentioned that we offer a mentoring program and that the new members in particular should think about taking advantage of this. Our excellent meeting concluded on time.
Thanks again to Caroline for being our Toastmaster and a special thanks to Jyoti Jain for volunteering to fill that role next time. Remember we are all here to help YOU succeed!
Respectfully submitted, Sandy Marthaler, VP of Membership