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.