Old is Gold

Today was a Special Event for Meridian Toastmasters. We hosted our first Open House for 2015!

Currently, we are 23 member strong and we would like to see new faces join our club every few months. With a teamwork display promoting the Open House, we had 6 new guests join us at our Open House.

As the VP of Public Relations, I decided to Chair the meeting, plus it had been a while I took up the meeting manager role! I chose the theme of "Old is Gold" which is saying that has been around for a while. To me, it reflects the importance of valuing the 'old' things in your life. Living in the age of instant gratification, we fail to acknowledge the value of being content. I find always find myself running after the next big thing, the newest phone, the new gadgets and so on. "Old is Gold' reminds me that just like a bottle of red wine, certain things increase in their value over time. There's only so much Nicki Minaj or Jay Z or Kanye West I can listen to. The classics of Doris Day, The Carpenters and the likes are timeless. Somehow, these 'timeless' beings help me slow down when I'm surrounding by everything that is so fast paced. 

The meeting ran smoothly. Afshan present Speech #6 on Vocal Variety. She talked about her recent trip to Mexico and shared her learnings about the Mayan culture. When I hear Mexico, I think of beaches and sunshine. So, I was very educational for me to listen to the history and facts about their culture. Melrose did quite well as Table Topics Masters by bringing us fortune cookies and making the members practice impromptu speaking by sharing their thoughts on their 'fortune'. She also encourage our guests to participate and 2 of them obliged! 

The meeting seem to have ended pretty quickly. As they say, you don't realize how fast time goes when you're having fun. And I had a lot of fun indeed!

See Afshan's speech here.
See the evaluation of Afshan's speech here.

Speech Evaluation Workshop

Meridian Toastmasters Club is composed of members with varying levels of experience. Such diversity offers an interesting playground where members learn, not just from the club programs, but also through interactions with each other. I feel lucky to be part of a club that offers a warm and nurturing environment through the seasoned toastmasters. The newer members bring an influx of energy and perspective that keeps it fresh for the 'oldies'. :P

Today, our club hosted a special event to learn more about providing confidence building evaluations. Karen Goodyear, DTM has been facilitating this workshop for many years now. The workshop format was structured similar to a speech evaluation contest. Karen talked about key elements of a confidence building evaluation. Marcia was a target speaker and 3 newer members volunteered to be the test evaluators. After each evaluation, Karen offered her thoughts on the 'evaluation' itself. It was a win-win situation because the speaker received 3 helpful evaluations and the evaluators also learnt about specific techniques they could use to improve for next time.

This will be good practice for the upcoming Speech Evaluation contest on Feb 10!

Click here to view to video of the workshop.

Hakuna Matata!

We kicked off 2015 with our first meeting today! Tie Feng, our VP Education, was the Chair of the meeting. Returning to work after the holiday season is always tough. But, our skilled VP Ed managed to get all roles filled and conduct another successful meeting. I was happy to return to that familiar club environment and the welcome chatter before the meeting begins. Though, this time I was nervous because it was my turn to deliver a speech.
It was a full house as Tie hit the gavel on the lectern and started the meeting with an upbeat note of Hakuna Matata! Sherry connected her Thought of the Day very well with the meeting theme by talking about the holiday season, being conscious of healthy eating and living a happy life! I presented a Monodrama from the Interpretive Reading manual. It was the park bench scene from the movie, Good Will Hunting. It went well for most part, except when I lost my track towards the end. In a monodrama, you are required to get into the skin of the character and emulate the scene. I had to constantly remind myself not to look at the audience, but to the imaginary person sitting on my left. Melrose, my speech evaluator, picked up on this and offered a positive feedback.
We had a few firsts at our meeting today. Sherry as Thought of Day, Pam as Grammarian, Marcia as TT master and Wendy as Timer. All 4 new comers server their role very well. Marcia stuck to the theme and asked all of us about our take on the Hakuna Matata song as it relates to our life. Pam went a step further in her role and mentioned a few noteworthy uses of English language used during the meeting. Wendy was quick to understand the timing device. Karen rounded up the meeting by offering her valuable tips as a General Evaluator.
It's going to be an exciting, and busy, month at Meridian Toastmasters. Our Speech Evaluation workshop will be held next week and the Winter Open House on the 27th.

See my speech video here.

Welcome!

The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public. ~George Jessel

Funny thing is that as we grow older, the fear of public speaking and communication starts becoming more intense. Maybe the stakes are higher, maybe we are afraid to make a fool out of ourselves. Whatever the reason(s) may be, it's a skill that will ALWAYS require polishing. Even the best speakers known to world need a little coaching. 

The idea of this blog is to share insights, interesting articles, videos, tips and tricks about public speaking, communication, and leadership. These three skills are of prime importance in anything and everything we do in this day and age. 

As I develop this blog, I will start to categorize the information into easily digestible segments, one of which would be a weekly attempt to summarize my Toastmasters club meeting experience.

Speech-a-palooza!

For the first time ever, Meridian Toastmasters hosted a Speech-a-palooza! Just in case one record wasn't enought, the 4 speeches today were all ice breakers. We had 3 new guest attend the meeting today. Karen opened the meeting with a lot of enthusiasm and talked about how excited she is to chairing this special meeting! She didn't waste any time and jumped straight into the speeches. Sundeep, Wendy, Sherry and Pam were the 4 speakers! I've always enjoyed Ice Breaker speeches and the chance to hear 4 of them in one sitting was not to be missed. The speeches were quite diverse. We found out about Sundeep's artisitic sensibilities when she talked about scrapbooking and her interest in making jewellery. Wendy shared a memorable travel experience to Tibet with her family. I was deeply moved by Sherry's speech on her fight with shyness and anxiety disorder. Pam ended the speech-a-palooza narrating her travel expedition around the world. All 4 speakers are off to a great start. I almost forgot that I was supposed to be an evaluator! We are looking forward to doing another one of these -paloozas, maybe with more advanced speakers this time!

Click on the names to see each of our member's Ice Breaker Speeches:
Sundeep
Wendy
Sherry
Pam

Remembering our Veterans

Today's meeting happen to fall on Remembrance Day. It was a full house with 2 new guests. The membership was grown in last 2 months, especially since our last Open House. We are excited to see new faces at our meetings.
The meeting starting with the Chair (Anil Lad) acknowledging the hard work of the soldiers with 1 min of silence. I was then invited to present the Thought of the Day and added my own spin to Rememberance Day by reminding everyone to also acknowledge the soldier within yourself and people around you. Geofferey's speech from the Advanced Communications Manual was aptly centered around Democracy. He talked in detail about the birth of democracy, about shared power, and about the importance of a strong legal system. Azura was a first time Table Topics Master. She conducted the session very well and posed questions to the members about their heroes, thoughts on army, veteran's day, etc. Our General Evaluator, Melrose, provided positive feedback for the meeting progress. Speech Evaluator, Christine Mirtsos, talked about conviction and speaking with conviction as part of her comments to Geofferey's speech. With so many new members this past month, we are looking into ice breaker speeches at the meeting next week!