It was cold and snow covered outside for our meeting on Tuesday March 5th! Here is the meeting recap:
Members in attendance Stephen McGirr, Heather Turner, Mariusz Sasinski, Tom Alvord, Rob Dalo, Andrew Watt, Kristyn Neal, Schuyler Diehm, Sheetal Patel
Guest in attendance Carmine DeYoung, Peter Wnek
Stephen McGirr dropped the gavel at 6:35 p.m. to start our meeting off and went right into his business meeting topics. First item was to remind of dues that need to be paid. $51 is due this cycle, $45 for Toastmasters International and $6 for club dues. Andrew Watt would like to kindly remind us, that we need to spend what is in our coffers as we should not make money as a not for profit organization. The second item mentioned was the upcoming Division B International and Tall Tales Speech contests, Saturday March 30th, at the Waterbury Town Hall from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.. Come and support our Internat! ional speech winner at the Area 25 contest, Carl Lepack! It will be a great meeting with great speech’s all around. Your officer team highly recommends the opportunity to be exposed to well-rounded speakers!
We had some guest introductions, with Carmine DeYoung, a toastmaster for 20 years who is hunting for a new club in the area, and Peter Wnek. Peter decided to come on in and see if this was the place to work on transferring his thoughts to words a little better. It sure is Peter!
Special congratulations goes out to new member Kristyn Neal and returning member Schuyler Diehm!! Welcome to, and welcome back to, the club!!! Can’t wait to experience your influence on the meeting dynamics!
Stephen McGirr then passed control of the meeting to our Toastmaster of the Night, Heather Turner. Heather wasted no time and got right to work, as we had a full speaking agenda, and proper timing is in the hands of the Toastmaster. Heather started with calling up Mariusz Sasinski with our invocation. It was an Albert Einstein quote, and had the meaning of live for today!
Our next meeting objective, was to call on our functionary role holders to hear about their duties for the night. First up was Sheetal Patel as the word of the day supplier. The word of the day was “portent” which means “a sign or warning that something, especially something momentous or calamitous, is likely to happen” or “an exceptional or wonderful person or thing”. It was a solid choice to share and was used at least a half dozen times in different variations. The next role called upon was again S! heetal Patel, but this time as the Ah Counter. The purpose of this role is to observe and keep track of, all filler words used throughout the meeting and gives report at the end of the meeting when called upon by the general evaluator. Rob Dalo was next tapped as out Grammarian of the night. The grammarian takes note of correct or incorrect grammar usage, advises how it can be made better, and also notes especially colorful language to share and bring to light so we can all benefit and try to incorporate such language into our own speeches. The next role was held by Andrew Watt as our Timer for the night. The timer keeps track of speeches, Table Topics, and evaluations, and signals when certain time thresholds are met. The timer signals these time markers with colored cards, records the total time used, and reports at the end meeting.
Moving onto the prepared speakers, Stephen McGirr was our first with a speech from Effective Coaching, Level 3, connect with your audience. The speech titled “Keep Moving Forward” took a look at the life Steve has led over the last 2 years, and the areas he has received criticism and felt halted by the opinions of other people in his life. Sometimes we can be stifled by living up to the standards or opinions of others, but the real focus that we need to keep in mind is what we want to do with our lives. We will face criticisms, doubts, and the opinions of others and ourselves, but when we keep hold of the vision of what we want to become as the focal point of our thoughts and actions, we keep moving ! towards our dreams. No matter what the obstacles, the vision we hold of ourselves in our minds will be the dominating director of where our lives take us. Heather Turner was Steve’s speech evaluator, and shared that more than previous speeches, he has moved into the center of the room more, and keeps a longer gaze at each audience member to boost the connection. More can be done in the way of asking questions and further developing a truly engaged audience.
Heather Turner was up next with a tale about mentors in her life, as it is a Level 2 pathways project, introduction to Toastmasters Mentoring. Heather shared her cooking life from the time she persisted in getting her first cooking position, to her experience with those she was around for her career. It was through cooking that she met mentors that believed in her, had a great work ethic, and was taught to appreciate employees. And while things can be at their most dire, a good mentor sticks up for their employees and those around them. Rob Dalo was her speech evaluator and shared that she ! does a really good job with body language and expressing thoughts with her words AND hands. Heather added vocal variety, especially with imitating the voice of her French kitchen boss. Rob did suggest that the mentoring story be developed a little further to really describe how the mentoring took place above and beyond the actual business skills Heather gained as far as work ethics and being good to employees.
Next on the agenda was Andrew Watt with a topic that comes before our elections are to take place for next year’s officers. Did you know that Toastmasters roles and officers are actually HIGHLY transferrable skills to the business world?! Toastmasters is actually a leadership organization. A small start that leads to bigger opportunities. Practice leadership by accepting real world positions in the club. Secretary documents legally binding meeting minutes, Treasurer practices real world items such as dealing with the IRS. That’s important!!! Sheetal Patel was his speech evaluator and shared that he had great vocal variety, but maybe was a little too loud for the room at times. Andrew covered s! o much ground with moving on the stage, vocal variety, and body language. A suggestion she made was that he could have touched upon all the roles a little each, instead of a couple roles with more extended descriptions.
Our final prepared speaker of the night, was Schuyler Diehm, with a speech on self-image. Having been one to struggle with self-image when he was younger, shared a process we can use moving forward with our own struggles. I, Stephen McGirr, as Schuyler’s videographer, was not able to take any detailed legally binding notes of the speech as secretary, so will move into Tom Alvord’s role as the speech evaluator, which will give the reader more insight! Tom noted that Schuyler did an excellent job at letting the audience settle before he started the speech. He used great questions to immediately get audience participation and buy-in. The speech was about giving value and passing something onto th! e listener, great for speech giving. Something to work on would be to be cautious of the pacing, as the younger generation can be faster in their communication than an older generation can grasp.
We next had our Table Topics portion run by Tom Alvord! Tom explained that Table Topics is what we do every day in general conversation, just with and added time limit component. Tom had with him a set of general questions that enabled some excellent answers. First up was Kristyn Neal with what book had changed her life. She shared that the book that changed her life was on the fundamentals of marketing, as now, she is at CCSU teaching it! Granted, she has a high level of comprehension and must remember to talk at a lower level for those just entering the subject.Mariusz Sasinski shared with the members a risk he had taken, the first of which was moving to the U.S. with a low level of English comp! rehension. The second of which was having a web design company and doing well, but then having all of his employees focus on a new game called starcraft and losing the company. He learned from that experience how NOT to do business! Peter Wnek was next up sharing about the town where he grew up which was Meriden CT. Peter is actually a photographer and is now documenting Meriden in all of its diverse glory o share as a media public relations campaign for the city. A blue collar town that Peter is shedding a different light on. Carmine Deyoung next shared her view on everything happening for a reason. God wink, or serendipity in her life and how it relates to her next book. The book has to do with the hobo life and her research follows a young man riding the rails, had her as the 2008-2009 hobo queen, and took her to the first national hobo convention in Iowa. A hobo convention and hobo queen??? Speech material all day long!
We then switched it over to the evaluations portion of the meeting which was led by expert General Evaluator Stephen McGirr! Steve shared that we did a great job making an excellent meeting. Steve kept it short and sweet so we could end just past the 8:00 mark.
Our next meeting is on March 19th! Can’t wait to do it all again with a full house of members and eager participants!! Thank you all for your participation, and we will see you soon!!
Steve
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