Capital City Toastmasters

Go, Team Go!  Our Cheerleader-in-Charge, Maria, grabbed her pompoms and led the meeting today.  Amy (another natural cheerleader) took us through the Table Topics.  I do have to say that these were championship worthy Table Topic Questions – of the quantum pompom variety … especially the one that Taline answered and answered and answered, allegedly.

Brad heightened his liberal cred with a persuasive attempt at making a full blown Scooter Touchdown Conversion.  Who would have thought that a scooter would be a great dating tactic?  And here I am saving for a sports car!  Forget singing in the shower, the perfect venue is apparently the helmet.  I would be careful singing/rapping in the helmet at stop lights, the panhandling-vet-God-bless-you-I’m-on-my-way-to-Dallas-folk might get confused and sing with you, unless of course you are flowing, then they simply won’t know the words.

Erin gave her first speech without a poem.  Shocking, really … Erin talked about the benefits of rail transit as a way of dealing with traffic congestion and highlighted the financial benefits to a city that gets on board with rail.  I can’t wait for a Q&A session with Erin where she lets us ask her all the questions we are dying to know about traffic engineering – I bet we will all have similar traffic pet peeves, and she will be able to help us make sense of the madness.  If it gets out of hand we can just call it a ‘town hall’ and throw some health topics in for good measure.

Albert, the deposed emperor, was assisted by Carol and Louis in arm-chair-quarterbacking the meeting’s speakers.  Carol is dying to do a speech on dance, don’t you know?

Ribbon Winners:

• Best Table Topic:  Robin
• Best Speaker: Brad
• Best Evaluator: Louis
• Best Humor:  Brad
• Most Enthusiasm:  Corky

This topic was inevitable given the number of lawyers and paralegals in our group – “Wacky Run-Ins with the Law.”  Rey was the Sheriff in charge of the meeting, though many of us lost it at the Invocation – it was hilarious.

Patrick called upon Wendy, Lee, Louis, and Keith for the Table Topics.  Lee and Keith gave some great stories about the in-law’s.  Between the four of them, voting was really difficult since they all did a wonderful job.

Amy gave a speech on her Top Nine Tips for Competing – originally it was Ten, but we narrowed it down to Nine.  Lora talked about water management and had some great practical advice for keeping our costs down.  Her one liners about the failing technology (the beamer) were great.

Robin had some great one-liners as well and great timing in his delivery – maybe we can convince him to compete in the humorous contest?

Don’t forget about the Happy Hour next week.

Ribbon Winners:

• Best Table Topic:  Keith
• Best Speaker: Amy
• Best Evaluator: Robin
• Best Humor:  Keith
• Most Enthusiasm:  Wendy

Stuart was the brrrrrrrave Eskimo in charge of this week’s meeting, kindly reminding us what jackets and mittens look like.  With triple digit days – it is definitely something to look forward to.

Albert always has interesting questions for the Table Topics, but he outdid himself this time with Jenny and Taline doing a tag-team effort about the merits of a nudist colony with each of them, for argument’s sake, taking opposing views.  This was Jenny’s last week with us and she will be sorely missed.  We all wish her great successes in her new locale and hope she will stop in if she is ever in the neighborhood!

Wendy did an excellent table topic on boyfriends and how much space they need and had one-liners-aplenty.  Allison related a funny story about staying in a hotel in Austin without a heavy blanket on one of those rare cold days in Austin in one of the hotels that desperately need thicker walls.

Erin started her prepared speech with a poem on the amateur man from the Catcher in the Rye and can be summarized as living humbly for a noble cause.  Her chosen noble cause is to be a vegetarian – and was explained in classic Toastmaster Style, with three points.  The speech was well organized and nicely done with great reasons to understand her culinary rationale.

Robert gave a presentation on some of his social faux pas from Germany/France and Japan.  Some of those were of his own doing while some were due to experiencing a new culture for the first time.  Note to self – don’t forget the shower slippers!

Patrick talked about how Toastmasters has benefited him and how we could use social media (e.g. Twitter, Linked-In, and Facebook) to our benefit.  As one of the (evidently) few holdouts on Twitter and Facebook, his views were of particular interest.

Ribbon Winners

• Best Table Topic: Jenny and Taline
• Best Speaker: Erin
• Best Evaluator: Lora
• Best Humor:  Stuart
• Most Enthusiasm: Patrick

Eric was the emcee (hammer, anyone ?) who did a fine job taking us through the meeting, peppering the agenda with references to Jacko’s finer moments in pop history.  Amy wore theme appropriate attire and broke into her groove, proving to all that Eric is not the only one with dance floor moves.  Table Topics highlighted much of Jackson’s effect on us – mostly hot or cold but hardly lukewarm.

Robert gave his first speech, titled “Winging it…and finding it.”  It described how, though he never really knew what he wanted to do with his life, along the way he figured that out and shared some of his stories from living in Germany.  It is funny how when you practice speeches at home you don’t get emotional, but do the same thing in front of a group, and let the emotion flow!  Why is that … ?

Robin varied his communication as he took us through a commentary about films.  No fluff here – it was all serious cinematic critic worthy selections.

Taline entertained us with 16 of her missed calls.  Though the topic could have simply been entertaining, with parents who demand a phone call upon your arrival home, no matter the hour, she masterfully showed us the very raw emotion of family tragedy and second chances.  So if you call Taline and don’t get an answer, let me take the opportunity to warn you here – stop calling or you will be placed in the “penalty box.”

Ribbon Winners:

• Best Table Topic – Brian
• Best Speaker – Taline
• Best Evaluator – Louis
• Best Humor – Eric
• Most Enthusiastic – Amy

It was a proud day for Capital City Toastmasters! It was a clean sweep for our club’s contestants at the Area J-61 contest Saturday, September 20.

Keith Smith took the first place trophy with his no-holds-barred, pull-every-rabbit-out-of-the-hat, gratuitous-sex-and-violence-laced Tall Tale, and Rey Deveau won the Evaluation contest with her supportive and insightful presentation. Congratulations Keith and Rey!

Lora Schneider did a bang-up job organizing the contest (along with Rich Bassemir) and Louis was the chief judge. But the two supporting role players who really made everything happen were…the timers: Amy and Jason.

Let’s support our gifted and talented winners at the Division J Contest Saturday morning, October 25. More details to come!

Last Saturday, when it was over 100 degrees again, was the kind of day you like to spend indoors – in an air conditioned room, perhaps sitting on a block of ice.  Well Louis, Taline, and I all took a road trip down to San Marcos to do just that: attend Toastmasters officer traning in a cool building near Texas State campus.

We were blasted with millions of tips and tricks, but I wanted to share just a couple with everyone:

• Three-C Evaluation method – Compliment, Critique, Challenge.   I like this method because it encourages the evaluator to think beyond the current speech, and to how the speaker can improve in future speeches (the challenge).  Avoid whitewashing at all costs – there’s always something that can be improved (even for Albert).  Just another option to add to the ‘compliment sandwich’, and Amy’s famous “3 things ya like, 3 areas to improve” approaches.
• Speech topics - to always have one ready:
  • Create a mind map of possible topics starting with any word
  • Brainstorm several ideas ahead of time so when the time comes, you can pick one

I also got lots of advice and info for running club contests so if you want to get involved in the next club contest coming up soon, to be chairman or just help out, email me or catch me at the meeting next week (July 23rd)!

There are several events coming up on the calender.

To find all Austin-wide events, look at the Austin calender we posted at http://toastmastersinaustin.info. At that site, you’ll find all sorts of forms for trainings, competitions and contests.

Specifically:

Next weekend, July 12th, is the Toastmasters Leadership Institute in San Marcos. There will be a lot of general training in addition to officer training. A few of us are planning to attend if you’d like to carpool.

This fall season we’ll have Tall Tales and Evaluations contests. We’ll be having our club contests or selections sometime in August.

There’s a Toastmaster of the Quarter program available to all Toastmasters in Austin (except district officers). This competition will recognize Toastmasters who work hard participating in and promoting the Toastmasters program.

The fall conference will be November 15th here in Austin this year. I’m chairing it and we’re setting it up to focus on outstanding education for members.

Info for all the above program are on the Resources page at the Toastmasters in Austin website listed above.

Louis