One Week until the Big Change

With the inauguration of our next President of the United States one week away, our club meet to talk about Change. Marvin began the meeting on time and asked Roger to lead the Invocation and Pledge.

Our Toastmaster for the day, Stephen B, introduced his assistants: Grammarian: Roger; Ah Counter: Mike; Timer: Barb; and Vote Counter: Brent.

Our speakers were:

Sonya talking about how important it is to “Celebrate You.”

Rick showed us his iPhone and described it as the “Best $200.00 I Ever Spent.”

Morry used body language to describe the “On-Demand Revolution.”

Table Topics were lead by Bill Butcher and he called on Ollie, Chuck, and Brian.

Mary was our General Evaluator and the assigned evaluators were Jerry, Joe and Stephen J.

Awards were given for: Table Topics: Chuck; Evaluator: Stephen J: and Speaker: Sonya.

Control of the meeting was returned to Marvin. He announced the Toastmaster and Speakers for next week and passed around copies of the duty roster for dates through February 3rd. He then announced that the Club-Level International Speech Contest and Table Topics Contest will be held on February 10th. To speak in the International Speech Contest requires that 6 CC manual speeches be given. The only qualification for the Table Topics Contest is that you must be a member in good standing of a club in good standing, so all are encouraged to try out.

The meeting was ajourned on-time, no detractors.

January Officer’s Meeting

This is the first meeting of the January to June 2009 Officers for the Plano Talkers Toastmaster’s Club. Attending in order of arrival, were Paul, Chuck, Craig, Marvin, Barb and Stephen J (with his helper).  Roger and Mary, we missed you.

Paul, Our President, began the meeting by asking all attendees if Thursday at 7:00 is still an OK time to meet on the first Thursday of each month. We all agreed that it is. Paul wants us to continue our current membership drive (and perhaps enhance it) because he believes that continuing to add members is important to sustain the club. Paul mentioned that Collaboration is his leadership style and he intends to bring that style to his tenure as President.

Stephen, our Treasurer, showed us the current status of club funds. One big expense that we all agreed we needed to change is the club funds being used to pay for breakfast at these officer meetings. It was decided to move the meeting to the Corner Bakery (near the weekly meeting location) and have each Officer buy their own breakfast, if they want something. We agreed to try that for February and see how well the location works.

Chuck, our Secretary, said that the Blog continues although he is sometimes a week or more behind. He promised to work on getting this to be more timely.

Mary, our VP for Membership, is out of town today. Paul said that Mary is tracking 6 people as potential members including Rick who attended as a guest earlier in the week and will probably join in the next week or two.

The group discussed other ideas for attracting new members including:

• Improving the Guest Book, perhaps replacing it with a form that gives us more contact info.
• Guest Packets: we have a few but need more and all were encouraged to bring in any Toastmaster Magazines we had finished so they can be included.
• Members wear their name tags and use the red name cards so that guests can see who everyone is. (May help new members too.)
• New Members get TI pins and maybe some type of name tag since the TI name tag is usually given when the CC is earned.

Marvin, our VP Education, reviewed our President’s Distinguished Club status.

• Officer Training for Jan through June Officers: we have 2 trained and need 2 more. Barb and Mary have attended training and the others are planning to attend on Jan 22nd.
• Our April Dues List will be due but that will have to be done on schedule.
• New CCs: we need 4 total: we have one (Chuck) and both Mary and Bill B are close. Need to work on number 4.

Marvin announced the dates for the International Speech Contest (shown on the Events page of this blog) and the officers decided that February 10th is the best day for the Club-level contest.

Barb, our VP for Publicity, is looking for more Toastmaster magazines so she can put them in local businesses to encourage new guests. We discussed having some meetings that are a bit different from our normal schedule. It was decided that we should try to have an all-table-topics meeting and an evaluate-the-evaluators meeting. Such meetings would not be more than once per quarter so that members get their chance to make manual speeches.

Roger, our Sergeant-at-Arms, was not in attendance. Meeting set-up and tear-down seems to be going well with everyone pitching in to get it done. There are no know supply shortages.

Craig, our Web Master (not an elected office), stated that he had revised the Officer Page on the site and that we should review our section. He is working the issue of getting a duplicate of the duty roster email. he believes it has to do with the web site having two copies of the duty roster on-line simultaneously. He will revise the Sample Agenda to include the correct Officer List.

Paul lead an open discussion including:

• We need to vote new members in more quickly, preferable the meeting after they submit their application.
• There will be an Officer Induction for the new set of officers. Because our Area Governor lives far from where we meet, we need to contact her and arrange the schedule so we know (and can plan for) when she will be at a club meeting. We need to make sure the induction happens for the good of the Club.
• We discussed getting more recognition for members as they complete speeches and activities that show progress toward TM goals.
• There was discussion of having a newsletter. Craig said that he would put it together if others will write it.

The meeting ended on time at 8:00 am.

The Future is Now

Our new President, Paul, called the meeting to order right on time and introduced our guest: Rick. Joe lead the Invocation and Prayer.

Stephen J was our Toastmaster and he introduced his assistants: Grammarian: Joshua; Ah Counter: Carol who used a new, friendlier, noise maker; Timer: Carol; and Vote Counter: Morry.

Speakers included:

Mary using a handout with blanks to fill-in, talking about the process of going from “Will Not to Still Am”

Mike discussing “Real Change” and not the kind in your pocket.

Marvin doing one of the TM-Prepared speeches (with a typo on the slides) concerning “Preparation and Practice”

Paul lead Table Topics and called on Gene, Joe and Stephen J.

Chuck was our General Evaluator and evaluations were given by Brian (his first) and Bill B. I’ m still not sure why Marvin didn’t have an evaluator.

Awards were given to: Table Topics: Gene; Evaluator: Bill; and Speaker: Mary.

Paul reminded everyone that the Officer’s Meeting will be this Thursday at the usual place. Paul ended his first meeting right on time.

All Things Christmas

Sonya was our Toastmasrter and choose this theme because we met on Christmas Eve minus one.

Gene called the meeting to order right on time and asked Mike to lead the Invocation and Pledge.

Sonya introduced her assistants: Grammarian: Rick; Ah Counter: Brent; Timekeeper: Chuck; and Vote Counter: Joe.

Our speakers were:

Brain discussing Christmas

Ollie talking about “$73 Per Hour, Really?”

Roger with his “SMARTER ” Goals

Table Topics were lead by Gene and included: Morry, Rick, and Brent talking about Christmas past.

Our Chief Evaluator was Mike who introduced evaluations by Mary, Stephen J, and Morry.

Chuck told a story about how they were “Looking for me!”

Awards were given to Table Topics: Brent; Evaluation: Stephen; and Speaker: Roger.

Roger, our Sergeant-at-Arms, asked the restaurant manager to join us for a couple minutes. The club presented him with a pre-paid Gift Card and thanked him for allowing us to use the room.

Meeting adjourned on time, one distractor “Missing Speech Title on the Agenda.”

Rain and Ice: What a meeting!

Only about 8 people made it to the Dec 16th meeting, and that did NOT include the restaurant manager. So we went across the street and had breakfast and talked for an hour.

I have pictures so we can prove we were there. Now I just have to find them. Look for them on our Flickr site soon.