September 15, 2020 newsletter
September 15, 2020
Greetings Toastmasters.
Hi Toastmasters,
We have been having consistently great meetings, with attendance anywhere from 16 to 21 attendees, with the 21 at our last meeting.
In our last meeting I really liked Egon Pederson’s education speech on introductions. It was right on the mark and was very timely as we are always looking for ways to improve ourselves.
Membership is strong and we are continuing to attract new members.
The members have been great in sending in their membership renewal payments with most member having paid already. That is a good sign that we have happy members.
We subscribe to the Toastmasters core values which are;
Integrity
Respect
Service
Excellence
Our Charter anniversary is October 1st. We are celebrating that on Wednesday October the 7th. This will be a special meeting where we celebrate our first complete year as a Toastmaster Club. We have done well and will continue on our path of Toastmaster Excellence. Naturally due to Covid 19 we can not meet in person, but that does not mean that we can’t have an awesome time. The agenda is currently under construction and we will announce that when it is completed.
Take note, be sure to prepare for the Tall Tales Contest on November 18th. Be sure to let your Educational VP know of your intent to compete. (email dan@danwhite.ca of your intent to compete.) This contest is a club level contest that unlike the International Speech and Evaluation Contest, it does not go beyond the club. To me this is the highlight speeches of the year.
We will be having an open house meeting on October the 28th where we invite friends and member prospects to attend our meeting. We have a health membership and to maintain that we always need to be watching for the right people to become a member of our Toastmaster family.
The meeting warm up session has continued to be a very popular part of our meetings and offers growth in skills for both the Chair and the members who all participate.
We have a refined role for the Chair as the warm up sometimes takes up too much time.
The Chair presides over the meeting. Calls meeting to order, welcomes everyone and makes opening comments.
The Chair welcomes any guests and asks them who they are, how they heard about us and what motivated them to come.
The Chair opens the meeting and conducts the warm up session. Prior to the meeting, the Chair will select one “question of the day” that will be posed to each attendee.
This is a short and snappy session where each participant will speak to to the question of the day, for about 30 seconds.
The chair explains that each person is to introduce themselves; Their name, their occupation, and how long they have been a Toastmaster, they then answer the question.
The Chair thanks the speaker and then asks the next person to introduce themselves and to give their thoughts on the question.
E.G. Would John please introduce himself, state his name, occupation and how long he has been a Toastmaster, then give his answer to the question of the day.
The Chair thanks the speaker and moves to the next attendee until everyone including guests have participated.
Table topics voting has not been working well, unlike in live meetings. Voting is prone to failure and it interrupts the flow of the meeting, so we are going to skip the voting for best table topics speaker for now.
The update of who your executives of the club are; Julie White as President, Dan White as VP of Education, Charles Hamilton as VP Membership, Nick Iliopoulos as VP of PR, Florian Czinszky as Treasurer, Sharon Cardie as Secretary and Pamela Norbraten as our Sergeant of Arms. We have completed our b-annual role training.
I sent out the role assignments Thursday morning, if you have not responded yet, please do so Now.
Have an awesome weekend.
Warm Regards
Dan White
VP of Education.