Elections Time

It's Elections season in Toastmasters!

Meridian Toastmasters hosted it's yearly executive elections meeting. As the past President, Christine chaired the Nominations committee. Karen and Geofferey helped out with the nominations. I am so glad that we had a full slate of executive officers for the up coming year. And I am excited to be elected as the Club President for the next year! You can watch our Elections part of the meeting here.

Keep it Simple

Anil opened the meeting today with the theme, 'Keep it Simple'. He emphasized about the importance of simplicity and narrated a story about how we tend to complicate things in our life. It was a small meeting, maybe because the weather was so gloomy! But, we compensated for lack of members by doubling our energy! Our grammarian, Karen, added an interesting twist to her role. Instead of the usual filler words, she suggested implementing more pauses during our speaking roles today. I thought it was clever and added another dimension to the duties of a grammarian.
I completed my Storytelling manual today by delivering the project #4 - A Touching Story. I recently read a book 'Five Seconds at a Time' by Denis Shackel. I was deeply inspired and motivated by the message conveyed by the author. The language of the book was very simple and conveyed the message very well. Naturally, I was inclined to use the story of Denis and share his simple mantra to overcome obstacles in our life - 5 seconds at a time. He used his own example of surviving a tragic mountain climbing accident to elucidate the concept. See my speech here. Since our second speaker had to cancel due to a work conflict, Anil made a prompt decision to show the speech delivered by the 2014 World Champion of Public Speaking. I think it was an intelligent move to use up the extra time. It was also a helpful to watch and learn from the speakers of an international caliber. You can view his speech here.
Anthony conducted the Table Topics session. His energy and enthusiasm are quite infectious. Even though I was distracted by work emails, I was drawn to the Table Topics session. He used everyday phrases and encouraged members to add their own twist to the meaning of the phrase. Everyone participated, including our guest! It's always fun to see our guests brave it out and speak during Table Topics! Marcia, our General Evaluator, provided feedback on how we ran the meeting. She made an important suggestion to move the Meridian Toastmasters banner so that it's in the 'view' of the speakers, especially when we record videos to be publicly displayed.
After the long weekend, we will return on Tuesday... And, it's Elections time again! New year, new executive!

Respect

Karen, our Chair, started the meeting narrating an experience she had last week at the local ravine. A local citizen 'disrespected' the boundaries that the City had marked out for a construction project. Karen shared her thoughts about how it's important to respect the boundaries. If we don't, we could end up hurting ourselves or someone else in the process. I could see that she was passionate about this topic. Maybe this could be a speech we could hear from Karen in the future. We had 1 new guest attend the meeting.
Our 2 speakers today, Melrose and Marcia, delivered their speech #8, Get Comfortable with Visual Aids, today. Both of them have unique styles that help them shine in different ways. Melrose talked about ANTs. I was expecting her talk to be about how ants are so disruptive and it's difficult to remove them. Her speech was all about that, however, the ANTs were Automatic Negative Thoughts that plague every one of us now and then. Her speech was inspired by a book she recently read. I thought it was very clever. With her effervescent personality, Melrose makes difficult topics quite fun to learn! Since this project was about getting creative with visual aids, I would've liked to see Melrose be more creative with the visual aids in their speeches.See her speech here. Marcia has a very professional style of speaking. She seems confident and in control of her topic. Marcia shared her experience volunteering at various organizations and encouraged the audience to consider volunteering to make a difference. She brought one of her T-shirts and shared a booklet where her name was displayed in the list of volunteers. See her speech here.
Pam conducted the Table Topics session. She posed questions to the audience keeping the meeting theme in mind. Tie added his own humorous twist to the idea of mutual respect. He shared how it's important not to have respect all the time because many jobs (e.g counselors, lawyers) make their living out of this! Needless to say, he won the Table Topics session today! Anthony rounded up the meeting as the General Evaluator. Christine and I will be speaking next week, both from our Storytelling manuals! Better get going on that!