Club Contest and Area 16 Winner

On Wednesday, September 5th, Midday held it's Humorous and Table Topics Club Contest. The first place winner for Humorous went to Jim O. and second place was awarded to Zuleikha. Shawntaye  won the Table Topics Contest and Jim M. came in second and Tom H. came in third.

We like to congratulate all the contestants.

Jim O. and Zuleikha

Jim M., Tom H. and Shawntaye

Today Shawntaye won the Area 16 Table Topics Contest and she will be moving on to the Division D Contest on Saturday, October 13th at the VA Hospital in Oakland at 12pm. Everyone please attend and cheer on Shawntaye.

A Retro Meeting

Joe was our Toastmaster today, August 8th, and his role as Toastmaster  filled an Advanced Speech project in Speciality Speeches. Joe completed two advanced manual projects in two weeks. He is certainly on his way of achieving an ACB. After Joe's opening, he called on Greg, who gave us guff, that is, he gave us the Word of the Day, guff. Of all the meetings I have attended, Greg never gave us foolish, empty talk.

Our meetings are not designed on a theme, although some clubs do. Our meeting today transcended time and space. Brttney's Table Topics centered around intergalatic travel. The first question was, if you could be beamed anywhere on your lunch hour, where would you go? In Tom's speech, he took us back to the 1940s as he held up a 1942 Mercury Dime and talked about the value of the coin compared to other years the dime was minted. He also gave us tips on researching a coin's value using the "red book." Carlton's speech was on Time Traveling and he interwove Toastmasters with time traveling. Carlton has  great command of facts and a way of holding us in suspense of what he's going to say next.

The Ice Breakers Cometh

As the hot humid weather continues, so do our Ice Breaker Speeches. Our new member, Tom, gave his Ice Breaker speech on July 11^th. His title was “It’s Complicated.” We got to know just about every aspect of Tom’s life from his admitting that he a procrastinator, as he held up a package of Toastmaster material that he was suppose to open a week ago, but just opened that morning, to his vacation in Alabama.

If Tom’s speech was “complicated”, then our next speaker, Greg, had a tongue twister title “Why We Do What We Do, Why Do We Think What We Think?” Greg gives speeches that require thought and reflection. In his speech, he said that we all needed to accept responsibility. Greg contrasted “needs vs. desires.” And, as always, he added humor to a serious, thought provoking topic.

Our new member, Thomas, was the Table Topics Master. He brought in a 20-sided die called an “icosahedron.” I never heard of this word before, maybe it was taught in one of my math classes, but I didn’t pay attention. I am also happy that I am writing this and not trying to pronounce it. Thomas asked for volunteers to come up and roll the die and whatever number the person rolled, he or she, had to talk about why this number was significant.

At our meeting today, July 18^th, we greeted a new guest, Shawn. We had another Ice Breaker Speech, this time from Brittney. The title of her speech was “What Do I Love?” She told us five things that she loves and she used descriptive words to paint for us a picture. One of the things that she loves is going to the movies. She described the seats as “plush movie theater fabric.” When she described the seats, I felt that I was sitting on the seats in the movie theater and not on less than plush seats at the Toastmasters’ meeting. She also loves to take the bus and to visit different neighborhoods in Pittsburgh.

Our Table Topics Master was Tom. His one word question he asked all of us was “why?” Why, what? That was our job to answer. Everyone at our meeting got the opportunity to get up and speak. Our new guest, Shawn, got up and gave a well-structured response. The “why” question he asked was “Why did I come here today?” His answer was to present himself to other people and to develop a passion for public speaking.

Next week, July 25^th, we have a full speaking schedule and I can’t wait to listen to the speeches and learn something new.

Welcome Guests!

The Midday Toastmasters, on June 13^th, held its open house and greeted eight guests. Joe, the VP of Membership, along with Jim M., Greg, and Eric did an excellent job organizing and setting up for this event. Joe didn’t just stop at organizing our open house, he also gave a speech from the Competent Communication Manual #4, How to Say it.  Joe has a talent in painting a picture with words. The title of his speech “I Want to Go Back” made us feel that we wanted to go back and we had never been there. He described his trip to Colorado Springs and the descriptive name of a park called “Garden of the Gods.” He talked about the elks he saw and the caves he explored.

           

Our second speaker was the president of the club, Eric, and he gave a pertinent speech “Why Join Toastmasters?” He told us about his own experience in public speaking, starting when he was in junior high school. He wanted to speak, but he was too nervous.  Later in his life, he took acting classes where he took on a persona. His goal in Toastmasters is not to use notes when he gives speeches.

After the two speeches, we had Table Topics and I took on the role as Table Topics Master. I brought several USA Today Snapshots to ask the members to speak  about for one to two minutes. We had time for three people to speak about reptiles as pets, what would you do if you won $5,000 dollars tomorrow, and what do you do when you are stuck at the airport? Our speakers were Zuleikha, Michael – one of our guests, and Blake. All three speakers gave interesting responses.

“Why Am I Here?” This was the Ice Breaker speech that our guest, Thomas, gave at the meeting on June 20th. The purpose of the Ice Breaker speech is for the members to get to know the speaker. We got to know quite a few things about Thomas: where he works, his experience in teaching, and technical writing.

Joe’s Table Topics were challenging. He asked the question, “Which would you rather…?” The either/or questions were stop war or world hunger, have no one show up at your funeral or wedding, find true love or ten million dollars, being reincarnated as a pet pig or monkey, and never be able to shower again or see one’s reflection again. I won’t say who gave their answer, but instead, I want you to think about the questions and come up with a one to two minute response. 

Dream, Inspiration, Laugh, and Scary

These were some of the topics our Table Topics Master, Jim M., came up with at our meeting today. He gathered words and pictures/images on his ipod and showed us the word and image and we had to speak for 1-2 minutes. This seemed like an easy table topics, but the words were so general that it was difficult to think of something.   Zuleikha was the lucky member who got two words instead of one – upside down. She talked about her fear of roller coasters at amusement parks. Blake’s word was laugh and he said that he admired people who were humorous, especially comedians. Paula’s word was adventure and she told us that no matter how old we are, we still can have adventure in our lives. My word, for the first round, was inspiration. I talked about how a professor inspired me to become interested in Ancient Greek and Roman history and culture. My second word, which sparked other people to comment, was scary and above the word was a painting of The Scream by Edvard Munch. I remembered reading that this painting sold for a lot of money, but I couldn’t remember how much so I said “three million.” Blake corrected me and said it was more like seventy million. Where did I get three million? That’s right – that was the amount I placed the bid for -that would have looked great in my living room. Many talk show hosts and commentators said that their five or ten year olds could paint something that looked like The Scream. This started a discussion about how each of us perceives works of art.

This was another great session of table topics where we had to think hard about what to talk about. We learned a lot about each other.

Living to 100, Sheep, and Aliens - Read about our Interesting Speech Topics at Midday

Would you want to reach your 100^th birthday? And do you like to read books in print or electronic format? These two questions from Table Topics sparked interesting responses from our members at the January 11^th Midday Toastmaster’s meeting. I was the Table Topics Master for the meeting and I chose USA Today Snapshots.  I asked the members if they agreed with the statistics, why or why not, or if they disagreed, why or why not.

We welcomed a guest to our club and she volunteered twice to come up and speak on a table topic, which was very impressive and brave. 

The following week, January 18^th, we had three speakers. Our first speaker, Eric, President of Midday Toastmasters, gave a speech about – Toastmasters.  A group invited him to speak about Toastmasters and he used the club to practice what he was going to say to them. Jim M. reminded us in his speech about the benefits of good dental hygiene and especially flossing. Zuleikha, our third speaker, continued the theme with her speech “How a molehill became a mountain in my mouth.”

To celebrate the Chinese New Year, Jim O. brought in fortune cookies as our Table Topics.

“What do you do?” This was the question that Paula asked us at the January 25^th meeting for Table Topics. People had to explain what they did or would like to do. Then they had to explain their background and skills and describe the results and/or benefits using  those skills.  This was a very interesting and challenging Table Topics.

Before you buy that lawn mower for the summer, consider buying sheep instead. This was the topic Zuleikha spoke about in her Advanced Manual Humorous Speaking on February 1st. Instead of buying a sheep, she decided to get a goat, so the title of her speech was “Getting My Goat.” We would like to congratulate Zuleikha for giving her first speech from an advanced  and challenging manual about humor.

Our firsts didn’t end with Zuleikha. Our newest member, Vryce, presented her first Table Topics. The question was what would you put in a space capsule that represented earth if aliens should find the capsule? She seamlessly added comments and humor between speakers.

What a coincidence that our two firsts in the meeting occurred on the first of the month.

The Mid-day Toastmaster experiement

This past meeting, since we had a single speaker, we tried an experiment. Instead of only having one evaluator for the speaker. We made copies of the evaluation sheet from the CC manual and had all attendees evaluate. The idea was to give a more thorough evaluation that you couldn't receive from a single evaluator. The speaker would be able to hear different perspectives and gain more insights into how he or she connected with different people in the audience.

Since I was the first sacrifice for the experiment, these are my reflections.

I thought it would have been better if there were more time to conduct the evaluations so there could be some explanation or questions for the speaker about why they did something or how they could have done something else.

In my case, I tried to give a first person type of story. I thought that it could have been inappropriate after a time and switched up the speech. Although this wrecked the speech, I was able to learn afterwards that this was something that people wanted to hear more about and I was able to ask if it would have become inappropriate. This type of discussion and feedback is priceless and I think it goes beyond what the toastmaster format does now.

It is obvious that this type of TM day can only be conducted when there are single speakers. But it does appear to be something very useful that could greatly improve speakers and possibly evaluators. The, "Oh, I didn't see that even though I was watching the speaker."

Again, this would need a lot of time and more than one round of table topics seems to break this down.