16 September 2014: Fall Speech Contest

Hello, and welcome fellow Toastmasters!

This is a quick blog reminder that our upcoming Fall Speech Contest is this coming Tuesday, 16 September. Join us at 5:30 pm, at the Cromwell Town Hall in Cromwell, for fellowship and community, competition and evaluation.  You'll hear some great public speaking, some terrific evaluations, and some observe some attentive judging as we work toward finding a victor in the club-level contest for public speaking.

A reminder that our victors go on to compete in the area-level contest, and then, if they succeed there, to the district 53 conference public speaking contest.

Hope to see you Tuesday!

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.

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.

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, 

 2^nd 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!

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!

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.

Meeting Minutes March 4th, 2014

Cromwell Community Toastmasters

3/4/2014

Theme:  No Supplies

Opening:  Charlie Hubert promptly opened the meeting at 5:30.  For an invocation Charlie read the Toastmasters mission and announced that we were going to run the meeting without supplies.  As Toastmasters we are put in positions where we have to improvise with what we have.   Charlie then introduced the Immediate Past President Rob Dalo to run the Business part of the meeting.

Business Items:  Rob welcomed the group and announced that the next meeting will be the Toastmasters Spring contest.  Rob introduced Tom to review for the group the speech contest and give his personal contest experience.    The speech contest will contain two segments the International Contest as well as Tall Tales.  Rob then challenged the group to “get out of the stands” and “get into the game”.   Currently 5 individuals volunteered to speak at the contest, more volunteers are needed. 

During the meeting Rob introduced the 2 guests in attendance Gaurav and Gloria, this was Gloria’s first meeting and Gaurav expressed interest in joining.

Rob then promptly introduced Brian Terry as Toastmaster of the Evening.

General Meeting:  Brian introduced the functionaries who gave a brief review of their roles.  John – Timer, Donald – ah counter, Charlie – Grammarian and the word of the day ebullience – extreme enthusiasm – was introduced by Carmen.

Table Topics:  Brian introduced Andrew as Table Topics Master who used thought challenging questions from Brian Eno, English musician and composer.  Andrew had the audience pull questions from a pile of index cards.

1.      Do something boring?  Mirslov (43 sec)

2.     Is something missing?  John (40 sec)

3.     Move toward the unimportant?   Heather (40 sec)

4.     Humanize something free of error?   Gaurav (38 sec)

5.     Your mistake was a hidden intention?  Carmen (20 sec)

6.     Only one element of each kind?  Rob (1:13)

7.     Revaluation a warm feeling?   Robino   (42 sec)

Speeches:  Brain Terry introduced the 4 speakers. 

1.     Elizabeth Landeen:  Your Body Speaks, All In or Fold -  6:30

2.     Sheetal Patel:  Persuade With Power, Skip the Bottled Water -  7:00

3.     Heather Turner:  The Persuasive Approach, The Importance of Networking for Business- 7:38

4.     Andrew Watt:  Vocal Variety, How I learned to Cook…Really Cook -  7:30

Evaluations:  Brian Terry introduced Heather Turner as General Evaluator who introduced the night’s evaluators.

1.      Carmen Jenkins - 1:00

2.     Bill Sullivan – 3:45

3.     Andrew Watt – 3:45

4.     Robin Thompson – 2:15

After the evaluations Heather asked for reports from the meeting functionaries.  She recapped the meeting and offered feedback to the group.  The meeting was handed over to Rob Dalo who asked for feedback from the guests in attendance, Gaurav said I’m want to join! and Gloria said It was great learning about Networking in the speech given by Heather.

The meeting adjourned at 7:15

Respectfully Submitted by William Sullivan

[posted by Hollie Rose CC, VPPR]