Sunday, August 31, 2014

Upcoming Meeting: 2 September 2014

A reminder to all members and potential visitors!

Our next meeting date is 2 September 2014, at Cromwell Town Hall in Cromwell, Connecticut:
Cromwell Community Toastmasters Club 5908
First and Third Tuesdays of the Month, room 222, 5:30-7:30 pm
Cromwell Town Hall
41 West Street
Cromwell, CT
Please consider joining us! If you're a first-time guest, a returning member, or just a curious onlooker, know that you're always welcome to participate.

Toastmasters is a community-based organization for training ordinary people to be better public speakers and leaders.  With almost 300,000 members worldwide in local clubs, we've helped people become better public speakers, more effective managers and team leaders, and more skillful at communication.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Functionaries: The Ah Counter

There are three functionaries at every meeting of Toastmasters. At Cromwell Community Toastmasters, our members sign up to be functionaries on our meeting agenda ahead of time; but at other clubs they're "voluntold" at the start of a meeting.  Those officers are:
  1. The Grammarian
  2. The Ah-Counter
  3. The Timer
Each of those functionaries is there to hold you to a specific standard as a public speaker, and you can make use of the feedback they give you at the end of each meeting.  To my mind, the Ah-Counter is the single most important functionary: here's what they do.
The Ah-Counter listens to every speaker and evaluator, listening for filler words such as "and..." "so, anyway", and "like....".  They also listen for pauses when you are making noises with your mouth, such as "uh..." and "umm..."  The Ah-Counter keeps a running total of the noises that you make, and reports back to you at the end of the meeting.
Why is this the most important functionary?  Those sounds you're making are distracting your listeners.  Studies have demonstrated that most of the time, you yourself are not even aware that you're making these sounds. It's important to growing your powers as a public speaker that you make yourself aware of those sounds, and that you learn to curb them in your speeches and your off-the-cuff remarks.

As important as the job of being the Ah-Counter is, though, it's also important not to take this role too often.  No one wants to be the person who has practiced listening for those sounds so often, that they can't hear anything else in the speech!

So remember: thank your club's Ah-Counters often, and take their counting skills to heart; and take your own turn at the Ah-Counter's chair from time to time — remembering to get credit toward your competent leadership award along the way!  But don't sit there too often — you want to listen to speeches too, and not simply get caught in evaluating how the message is presented.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Upcoming Meeting: 19 August 2014

We're having our next meeting on August 19, 2014, in our usual place:

Cromwell Town Hall, 41 West Street, 
 2nd Floor (follow the signs), Cromwell, CT  
Toastmaster Club 5908 ~ District 53, Area C-32 
First & Third Tuesdays Each Month, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.
If you're a guest, we'd love to have you stop by! It looks like we're going to have a full slate of members' prepared speeches, and it should be an entertaining evening.

What you'll find is that this meeting follows a pretty standard format:

  • We'll have an opening invocation, followed by a "word of the day"
  • There will be a short business meeting
  • The meeting functionaries will be introduced: Ah-Counter, Timer, and Grammarian
  • The Topicsmaster for the evening will present a series of subjects for timed but unplanned speeches.  
  • The Toastmaster for the evening will then present our formal, prepared speakers one at a time.
  • The General Evaluator will introduce and mediate a series of evaluators, who will comment on each of the prepared speeches.
  • The General Evaluator will call on each of the meeting functionaries to give a brief report on their observations during the meeting
  • We'll close the meeting, with a brief bit of social conversation afterward, and give our guests a chance to talk with our membership.
If you're a member, please be aware that the Free Toast Host 2.0 site which hosts our agendas was experiencing technical difficulties earlier this week. If you signed up for a role, please confirm that you are still signed up for that role; if you haven't signed up for a role yet, please do so.

Most of all, please remember to Bring Your Manuals.  As our Vice President of Education (VPE) Bill Sullivan says, "Never speak for free." You're here to improve your skills, as a listener, as an evaluator, as a speaker.  Bring the manuals so that you can be evaluated on your work, and learn to make progress — toward your goals.  

See you Tuesday!

Monday, August 11, 2014

Fall Contest: September 16, 2014

Hi all.  It's nice to be able to write again so soon. The blog stats show that we have readers who are returning slowly but surely. Welcome back!

I'm writing to announce the Fall Speech Contest for 2014.  Cromwell Community Toastmasters will be holding its Fall Speech Contest on September 16, 2014, from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. Our topics for the speeches fall into two categories:

  1. Humorous Speeches: For this contest, our members have to be funny, they have to be original, and they have to tell stories — not just string together one-liners.  They also have to avoid objectionable language: not easy, but great practice, and a terrific challenge.
  2. Table Topics: For our second contest, our members are going to be given a subject for a speech about 10 seconds before they have to speak on it. Table Topics are challenging — you never know what it is that you're going to be asked to speak on, whether the price of tea in China or your favorite movie ever or the best meal you've ever eaten.  Table Topics contests are a real high-wire act, and they test your mettle like no other.
The Toastmasters website has a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on the subject of contests: who may be in them, who can compete and advance to the next level of competition, and what the requirements are for judges.  If you can, please familiarize yourself with the rules before Hollie Rose, our Contest Chairperson, requires you to get familiar!

If you'd like to be part of the Speech Contest, you need to be a member of Toastmasters in good standing, and a member of our club.  Which means you need to come to the meeting on August 19 at 5:30 pm and talk to our Vice President of Membership, Miroslav, about joining up.  Hope to see you then!

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Renewal

Hello, and welcome again!

After a long hiatus, I'm going to try to get this blog up and running again.  The Cromwell Community Toastmasters (Club 5908) is a President's Distinguished Club for four years running now.  It falls to me, as the club's Vice-President of Public Relations, to market and explain this club, and the Toastmasters program of public-speaking and leadership development, for a new audience.

But I get ahead of myself. My name is Andrew Watt, and I've been a Toastmaster for a year now.  In my first year, I completed my CC award (Competent Communicator), and I almost completed my 1/2 CL award (Competent Leader).  It's a bit of a stretch to say that the first half of my Competent Leader award has made me half of a competent leader — but it turns out that the first part of being a leader is showing up.

Being in the right place, at the right time, makes all the difference in the world.  When we Show Up, we're saying that we care, that we're making a commitment.  Showing up for a Toastmasters meeting — as a guest of a member or as a curious visitor, as a member, as an officer —is about making a commitment to yourself. You are telling the world, I want to communicate better, so I can lead more effectively.

Are you showing up?

Our meetings continue to be on the First and Third Tuesdays of each month, at Cromwell Town Hall, Room 222, from 5:30 to 7:30.