A word from President Dan

Wow! Winter came early this year…. I don’t usually put on my snow tires til the end of November. Oh Well, there must be a silver lining in this somewhere…. Maybe an early spring? Maybe an Indian Summer?

We had an awesome meeting on Wednesday, and completed our first contest, ‘Table Topics.’ The winner was Joan Winter. She will go on to the next level of competition. We look forward to that. The contestants were Julie White, Pamela Norbraten, Joan Winter and Dan White.

Nick Iliopoulos did an awesome job as contest chair. Nick, Julie White and I put quite a bit of work into the preparation, therefore that helped Nick to pull off a great performance in spite of him never even attending a Toastmaster Contest.

Now that we managed to figure out all the procedures of a contest, we are much better equipped to handle future contests. Naturally it is a lot of work to translate a contest into an agenda, but once you have done it, it will be easier.

We now are looking forward to the Tall Tales Contest on December 11th. Personally, I am very excited about this contest. I know you too will also really get into it when you start thinking about your own clever twisted tall tale. Start thinking about what big lie that could almost be believable, that you could spin. We are looking for as many members as possible to compete. This is a super fun contest. A perfect time to hone your presentation skills…. Let Julie or me know as soon as you can if you are in or not. The more members who let me know early, the better planned the
contest will be.

Regarding the Toastmaster Charter Ceremonies, I goofed by assuming 6 weeks from Oct 1 would be sufficient to receive our Charger paperwork from Toastmasters Head Office. What I did not know is that the clock starts at the end of the month of approval. So now to be safe, I will wait until we actually have the paperwork before scheduling the Ceremonies…. BUT HEY! There is a silver lining. Upon advice from our Mentor Joan Winter, we will make it a Charter Party. We will book a suitable dinner meeting spot and do it as a proper celebration.

We have two new members to our club, who came out to our open house meeting. Lisa Pacitto and Sharon Cardie. Lisa is giving a speech this coming meeting and Sharon will start attending on November 27th.

This week’s meeting will be a fun meeting. We have an awesome line up of members who are going to pull off another great meeting. We are expecting at least two guests.

Starting this week, we are going to have a weekly educational tidbit on Roberts Rules of Order. Every week until we get familiar with the process. The sessions will be short and fun, each presenter will have a different slant. By having the lessons short, no one will get overwhelmed or bored. We want to make sure our members understand and are familiar with Roberts Rules in our business sessions of our club meetings. Because the club is all about its members, we want to make sure all our members know how to have a voice in decisions that affect our club.

Next meeting will be meeting #19. We have accomplished a lot in our first 18 meetings and we still have a way to go. The meetings keep running better and better as we tweak our way along. Soon our meetings will run like a fine mechanical Swiss watch. Things are working well largely because we put good energy into planning our meetings and because our members are so good at informing us of relevant information needed to make sure the planned agenda is actually what happens in the meeting.

It is so very rewarding to be part of something so positive and is so much fun with such great members.

Dan
dan.white@taxauditsolutions.com