Capital City Toastmasters

Welcome to Capital City Toastmasters!!

If you are looking for a place to improve your communication and leadership skills you have found it.

Visitors are always welcome! Come join us any Wednesday from noon to 1:00 p.m. at the Waller Creek Center, 625 East 10th Street, in downtown Austin. See the Meetings page for more details.

Theme: The Other You

Word of the Day: BLEB!

Do you have a look alike – are we seeing double?!?  Today was Doppelganger day, and Toastmaster Blake wanted to know all about “The Other You.”

Our table topics master, Brittani, exposed her other side which involved spending lots of money to support a shoe fetish.  She called on Dev, Shundreka, Katie, Shane, Stuart and Jennifer to answer questions relating to their celebrity look alike, wild and crazy split personalities and their innate ability to lie with a straight face.

Walter was our entertaining speaker.  His dramatic talk was filled with blood, gore and Zombies!  Working effectively through technical difficulties, his speech was complete with sound effects and swinging hip action!  Katie delivered speech #3 from the CC manual, “Austin Eclectic.” In the true spirit of Keeping Austin Weird, she gave us 9+ tips all about the corky side of Austin.  Bottom line, all outsiders should learn to “conform to our non-conformity!”

There were 5 guests today, and it was a clean sweep for our ribbon winners…

Best Table Topic: Jennifer

Best Speaker: Walter

Best Evaluator: Jennifer

Most Enthusiastic: Walter

Humor: Walter

The theme was “Bagels”.  Never before has a theme generated so much controversy, so much heated debate and ultimately violence and then tender reconciliation.  BAGELS!!!  You either love them or hate them or kinda okay with them or would eat one if there were no donuts available and there was fresh cream cheese or if someone brought them into work to share you might or might not have one if it was close to lunch or something.

Our Table Topic participants were totally into theme and it’s very obvious from the following quotes -

“In my dreams, I make out with Jabba the Hut.”

“I go good with any spread.”

“If stranded on an island with my only friend, I would eat that friend.”

“I go to work with last night’s puke in my hair.”

“As a virile young man, how can I carry these donuts when my hands are full?”

Amanda gave her ice breaker and told us how she loved growing up in Troy, TX and if it were up to her she would have stayed there for life but broken-hearted, she left that excitement .  Who would blow dry the sheep?  She has bigger things to worry about like unfortunate children.  Amanda gave a great speech to introduce herself to the club.  I weep for the wet sheep.

Laura gave a talk on how to talk.  That is, how to have a conversation with real people in social settings.  She provided great tips like exchange facts, talk about your opinions and wear revealing clothing that are a couple of sizes too small for you.  I added that last one.  She then demonstrated with Jennifer in a totally unrehearsed demo as if they were at a party.  The give and take provided a good example of her topic.  Additional tips – Ask open-ended questions, take risks and even prepare things to talk about.  Avoid personal topics such as your hemorrhoid flare up even if you’re itching to talk about it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ribbon winners (a number of members were disenfranchised and their votes were not counted so the actual winners are not known.)

“Our Pets” was the topic of the day. Fuzzy, lovable, vomiting pets. Heather started us off with a story of an heiress she worked for during college who kept a bucket of her favorite horse’s ashes in the stables. We had six table topics; speakers were Taline, Becky, Robin, Shane, new Keith and Thao. Jessica tried to get speakers to talk about pet analogies but everyone seemed to want to focus on favorite pets, or their lack of affinity for pets, as in Shane’s case. Thao told us about here reckless hamster who kept breaking water bottles. And Robin, completely off topic, told us about how he got dating tips from Play Girl. The last word in dating is, per Play Girl, don’t go out with a man you met in a zoo! Shane came away the winner though with his funny commentary on vomiting pets he does not want in his home.
Jennifer gave a seriously great speech called “Blessing and Curses.” Sometimes what at first seems like a curse can actually turn out to be a blessing like in the case of her brother going to rehab. The therapy that was required during his treatment actually brought them together as a family and helped to build a stronger foundation for family relationships going forward. As always she was engaging and entertaining. Brittani also gave an excellent speech on making food and gifts at home. She gave us some great tips on how to do more instead of buy more. And if we must buy, try to buy items others have made from scratch, as on the website etsy.com. Brittani gave a great speech and also passed around some incredible home-made brownies. Yummy! Evaluations were thorough and enlightening. Katie Sternberg came out strong with a funny, tongue-in-cheek evaluation of Jennifer. Who knew that they were arch rivals!

Best Tabletopics: Shane

Best Speaker: Jennifer

Best Everything Else: Katie Sternberg

Rick Perry isn’t the only one with “oops” moments.  We all have that sinking “Oh No!” feeling more than we care to admit, but Toastmaster Shane wants to know about them all.  He of course has never had an Oh No moment, so he shared a heartwarming little story about his ”friend”, a small child, profanity in a bucket and Facebook.  Many guests were in attendance for the Toastmaster tales of woe, including Brian’s wife who apparently is just in it for the tamales.

First time Table Topics Master Thao jumped right in with some good questions, saving the best for Buff Keith (aka Old Keith).  Carol insisted that she never makes mistakes – she’s a perfect angel who’s just here to support the rest of us unfortunate souls.  Amanda’s generosity is unacceptable and downright inconsiderate in her new bureaucratic government job.  Amy’s ailing dog wasn’t just a costly mistake… he turned out to be a costly best friend.  Katy is mountain biking again – watch out!  New member Kevin recommends white lies to get out of admitting you made a mistake – think quickly, work fast and watch the mistakes melt away.  Old Keith proved he deserves the Funny Man title with his speech about how it feels to be an unwanted baby.

Walter impressed us all with his ability to incorporate fat asian dolls into a speech about business entity selection.  Brendan captured the magic in his evaluation, giving Walter props for confidence and suggesting a little less of the “Toastmaster dance.”

Chris gave us the run-down on his leadership project.  He had some serious SUCCESS planning a Toastmasters conference.  He laughed, he cried and ultimately, he got his next award.  Congrats, Chris!  Robin liked Chris’ enthusiasm and encouraged him to work on his “writing on whiteboard” skills.

Corky doled out all sorts of compliments, convincing the guests that joining our groups is not an “Oh No” decision.

Congrats to the ribbon winners!

Speech - Walter

Table Topics – Amy

Enthusiasm – Corky

Humor – Keith

Evaluator – Robin

It was a perfect theme for our Table Topics smackdown.  The first punch was doled out by Olivia with the word of the day: Gobsmack.  It was used on surprisingly numerous occasions throughout the meeting.

Table Topics Master Katie kicked off the entertainment portion of the meeting (our Table Topics contest, affectionately referred to as the Smackdown)  with her casually complex question about an overheard phone call in a similar vein to “I know what you did last summer.”  Undeterred, the contestants did a quick pivot, then jabbed back with some excellent responses.  Brenda proudly gushed about her daughters, the only people who could break through her composed demeanor to make her yell with excitement.  Very few people could make Blake exclaim the word “fantastic” in public, but he does have one idol who could get him to emote – he’ll tell you about it if you ask nicely.  Jennifer would like nothing more than a visit with her Grandpa.  Wendy shared some especially strong feelings about fellow dog owners.  Message received loud and clear – don’t mess with Wendy.  Brendan did a nice sidestep to avoid the question completely and answer his own table topic.  Corky doesn’t kiss and tell… except for every single time he gets in front of the Toastmasters club.  Keith was the last one in the ring with his heartfelt story about how much he adores parenting.

Robin recited two plays, giving our Japanese guests a challenging lesson in English listening skills.
Maureen evaluated, giving some good advice about making a clear distinction between the various characters in a play.  If your vocal variety is limited, props are a great idea.  John was the general
evaluator, with praise for the Table Topics contestants and good analysis of the overall Smackdown.

Toastmaster Amy gave the final Knock Out with her easy humor and ability to roll with the punches.
Ribbon confusion ensued, but Amy worked it all out.  Congrats to the winners!

Table Topics (Smackdown contest winner): Keith

Table Topics runners up: Wendy and Jennifer

Speaker: Robin

Evaluator: Maureen

Enthusiasm and Humor: Wendy