November 5th Officers Meeting

Chuck found out that there is a two month grace period before removing previous members from the website so we’ll wait till next month to purge our website.

Morry reminded us that the District Conference is coming up.  Morry and Paul signed proxy form for contest so that Marvin and Barb will go in their places.

Marvin mentioned that the upcoming club contest should be held on Feb 2nd.  The area contest will be on Feb 19th.  Marvin will run this contest.

Paul discussed upcoming officer election first Tuesday in December.

Bill will order CC/CL badges all at once for a quarter (of the year) in lieu of one at a time to save shipping costs.  He will also order new CC manuals.

Charles discussed the option of moving to the opposite side of the restaraunt.  He said we’d try it on November 17th.

Paul mentioned that the 25th anniversary of the Plano Talkers is in January.  Stephen’s name was mentioned as a potential leader for that event.

October 1st Officers Meeting

October 1^st Officers Meeting – Paul, Bill, Chuck, Morry, Stephen, Charles, and David

Bill reported that we had 48 current members, but estimated we’d have over 40 since some won’t renew.  Chuck stated that he would remove members from the website that didn’t renew.  We discussed what options we have if our club grows to 60 people.  One suggestion was to move to the other side of the restaurant.

Morry discussed the need to fill the VP Membership role left by the absence of Scott Kain.  Chuck, temporarily filing Scotts role, created new folders for visitors, and he mentioned that Alexis volunteered to fill the position permanently.  We agreed she would do a fine job in that position.

David mentioned that he had not blogged our meeting minutes from the last few meetings.  I agreed that should be done regularly.

Stephen reported that everyone who wants a mentor now had one.

Bill will look into pen for guest speakers (twice a year for contests).

There was a discussion about the need to update the projector screen.  No action has been agreed to concerning this item.

The Officers March In(n)!

Breakfast Time for the Officers. Paul, Mary, Chuck, Marvin, Barbara, Stephen and Roger attended.

Chuck reported that we now have a picture on our Flickr site (link is on the Blog, upper right corner).

Mary reports that Charles and Justin have Joined, David (visitor on Tuesday) wants an application and we have to check on John’s Transfer into the club.

Marvin reviewed the roster trying to determine who will renew and who won’t. Looking at President’s Distinguished Club competition, when Mary completes her CC in April we will have 9 points. There was a discussion about whether or not to push to get the tenth point (two more CCs) and we decided to let them happen or not as the speakers complete the manual. Marvin told us about the next election (May 2009) of Officers and we decided that it is time to begin getting the word out to the club that we are looking for volunteers for offices. In general, one year is the longest anyone should hold the same office without a break.

Barbara talked about her recruiting efforts and Chuck asked if we could target more women as we seem to have only men as visitors. There was a discussion about how to do this. Barbara will work on it.

Stephen reported that there were no expenses or income for February and that Dues are Due. In fact, he has about half of the club dues already collected.

Roger reports that the club cabinet locks at the meeting site were broken by the restaurant. He will attempt to fix it this week. There followed a discussion of how the room should be set up and an arrangement was agreed upon. We will all work to set this up and see how it works.

Craig was unable to join us to report o the web site, although it seems to be working well as that is where all of our new members find us.

There was a discussion of the wearing of name tags. All of the Officers will wear theirs next week and we’ll see how it goes.

There was a discussion of how we can get special recognition for Gene and his Speech Craft at UT-D. Marvin will work with the District Officers to see what can be done.

Continued discussion about the next round of Officer Elections. Since Andrew hasn’t been able to attend lately, we nominated Mike to be the point of contact for members to discuss becoming officers.

The meeting ended right on time. This seems to be a good place to meet (not withstanding that two officers forgot that we had moved the meeting).

February 2009 Officer’s Meeting

We met at a new place and were surprised to find that the front door said they didn’t open until 7:00, which is when our meeting starts. We talked about this a bit since we would like to grab some breakfast before the meeting starts. Well it turns out that regardless of the sign they let us in and let us buy breakfast earlier than 7:00. So we’ll try this location at least one more time.

Attending today were Paul, Stephen J, Mary, Marvin, Barbara, and Chuck. Paul began the meeting by announcing that the “Last Chance” TLI is this Saturday. Looks like all of the Officer’s will get trained this time.

Mary said that she has 11 prospects and we all discussed what would happen if the club got too large. No action taken but something to keep in mind if our membership continues to grow. Mary said that 2 or 3 of her prospects had told her they would join this month. Since most of our new members come to us through the web site, we discussed making sure to keep the member bios and Officer Bios up to date.

Marvin talked about President’s Distinguished Club. Mary is 2 speeches away from CC. That and Officer’s Training and our Dues Update in March will give us a total of 9 points. We would need 2 more CCs to get 10 points and that is possible but not for sure. We also discussed making sure of Mentor assignments, ensuring we have people involved in the upcoming contests, and reviewing the concept of Table Topics for all of our members to ensure everyone knows they need to talk for at least a minute.

Barbara needs more magazines for her publicity campaigns to our guests. We also talked about how to get some publicity from the upcoming contest winners.

Stephen said that we only had one transaction this month, a new member paid dues. We expect an influx of money in March from Dues Renewal. Paul will be receiving the roster by email, a first this year at it usually comes by mail.

We also discussed a new table arrangement to give our speakers a chance to work the room differently. We will try this after the contest.

We adjourned a bit early but all agreed that we liked the place for meetings.

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.

Officers call – Transfer of Duties

Our December Officer’s Meeting began on time with Andrew, Paul, Gene, Mary, Craig, Roger, Barb, Stephen J, Chuck and Roger attending. We almost needed a bigger table.

There was a discussion about the invocation at the start of our meetings and we just want to be sure to include all faiths so that everyone feels welcome.

Andrew began by introducing the theme of today’s meeting as being a “passing of the torch” for the outgoing-incoming officers. Paul will become President and Andrew becomes Immediate Past President. Mary will take over Paul’s duties as VP Membership. Gene will not be able to attend meetings regularly because he will be teaching on Tuesday mornings next semester. So he relinquished the seat as VP Publicity to Barb.

We began with Paul discussing Membership (and Mary taking copious notes). Paul will key in our newest member (Brent) to TI today. Stephen offered to help but Paul said he had the time planned. Paul reported that as all of our recent (within the last year) new members had found us on the web, we need to keep our site as up to date as possible. Paul discussed the Guest Book and said that it is useful but there needs to be more room for contact information as sometimes it is difficult to read because the space is so small. Paul suggested that we attempt to contact inactive and former members to get them started again. Barb mentioned that perhaps we should attempt to get some presence within the job seekers’ arena.

Gene talked about Chamber listings and joining with other Plano clubs to have a representative at Chamber meetings to publicize our meetings. Gene discussed the Detractor System and said that we continue to be within the limits we had selected. He showed us that our biggest repeat offender seems to be “missing speech titles on the agenda.” This may be a symptom of a lack of preparation by the speakers.

Craig asked how we all thought the web site could be better used to attract new members. Andrew asked that all new officers update the Officer Bio portion and the Member Bio portion of the site. Having our pictures and some of our own stories and progress may help others choose Plano Talkers. Of course, we are the only early morning club in Plano and that does help.

Stephen gave a Treasurer’s report and we seem to be on track with money. There was a suggestion made by Gene that we develop and approve a budget for each officer term so that we can be sure we don’t forget anything and stay on-track with money. We had a couple large expenses linked to the web site and the scheduler program this month. So our planned $40.00 gift card for the Spaghetti Warehouse Manager might make the budget a bit close until next renewal. Barb suggested that we ask the club membership to make a $1 or $2 donation each of the next two weeks to pay for the gift card. Stephen will announce this via email to all members.

Roger reported that supply levels seem to be ok and he gets lots of help in both setup and tear down each week.

Chuck talked about the Bog and there were some questions about getting pictures on the site. Chuck mentioned that we have a flickr.com site but no pictures are posted.

Mary asked about making welcoming phone calls after attending a meeting. She said that the calls she had received had been a big influence in her joining the group. She will begin these calls as soon as possible.

New Business: Gene mentioned that he has been asked by the University to be a part of a club called SIFE and help to coordinate a speech practice for the group. He mentioned Speech Craft, the Toastmasters program for students. It was decided that he would introduce this idea at the next club meeting and see if the club will sponsor the Speech Craft. Our obligations would be only time by individuals to make speeches to SIFE meetings. Usually one per week beginning in February.

The Mentor program was discussed and the VPs of Education and Membership will work together to assign mentors as soon as new members join the club. We need a mentor for Brent.

There was a discussion about scheduling a quarterly club meeting to be 15 minutes longer than usual to accommodate club business. This needs to be raised at the club level.

We almost didn’t get breakfast but squeezed it in at the last minute. The meeting ended right on time.

A Cold Start to the Christmas Season

We started December on a cold morning as Andrew called us to order right on time. We had 15 members on hand including Brent who submitted his application last week. Gene lead our Invocation and Pledge.

Roger was our Toastmaster and he introduced his assistants: Stephen J as Timer; Joe as Ah Counter; Chuck as Vote Counter; and Mike as Grammarian.

Our three speeches today were:

Morry discussing the requests he gets for help buying/building a computer with a speech entitled, “Buy a Dell.”

Mary persuading us to “Get Your Merry On,” a theme repeated in the napkins she brought for the occasion.

Pete gave us some ideas about marketing in this down economy with a speech entitled, “Marketing for Today’s Business.”

Barb lead Table Topics and called on Gene, Brent, Bill S. and Mike.

Carol lead our evaluation team which consisted of Steve B, Rick, and Andrew.

Bill S was the Jokemaster.

Awards were given to: Gene for Table Topics; Andrew for Evaluation; and Pete for Best Speaker.

Mike, acting in his capacity as Past-President, introduced the slate of officers for the January 2009 to June 2009 term. After a miscommunication by Chuck was corrected by Andrew and everyone got to practice Robert’s Rules (Thank you Gene), the slate of Officers nominated and elected are:

President: Paul

VP Education: Marvin

VP Membership: Mary

VP Publicity: Barb

Treasurer: Stephen J.

Secretary: Chuck

Sergeant-at-Arms: Roger

Also, not an elected office but worth mentioning: Webmaster: Craig

The membership elected the officers by acclimation. The first Officer Training Session is December 6th.

We also voted to allow Brent to join the club. Welcome to Plano Talkers!

Regardless of the elections, we were dismissed on-time. What an efficient meeting.

November Officer’s Breakfast

Andrew called just as we were getting started and apologized for not being able to attend. So Marvin lead the meeting. Other attendees included Chuck, Gene, Paul, Roger, Stephen J, Mary, Barbara and Craig (in order of appearance).

Roger lead off with a discussion of repairs to our American Flag. He plans to obtain a pole to use to secure the Flag (similar to the way we secure the Club Banner) so that we don’t have to climb on chairs and use tape. Roger has placed an order for awards for Club Meetings.

Stephen J handed out a copy of the club funds status (we’re OK) and asked about a Christmas Gift for the restaurant manager. Last year we gave a $50.00 pre-paid gift card from American Express. Chuck made a motion that we do so this year, Seconded by Craig and passed by the Officers. We have 26 dues paying members at this time.

Chuck let everyone know that he has the Club’s projector and Craig mentioned that he has the Club projection screen. We seldom use it as the restaurant has that is more convenient. As there has been some inconsistancy in the meeting agenda format, Chuck will develop a document of steps to download the standard agenda from the web site.

Gene talked about the Detractor Program and the fact that the club has had one or none each week for the last month or two. As Gene will not be able to attend most meetings during the Spring Semester (he will teach a class each Tuesday morning) he asked that someone take over the duty. The consensus was that the Secretary should take this duty and Gene and Chuck will meet to transfer the database and instructions.

There followed a general discussion of General Evaluator comments, Meeting prepartion by the Toastmaster and others with assigned roles, and the use of Mentors. The consensus is that many newer members are unsure as to what the requirements of various roles are during the meetings. We need to place a renewed emphasis on the Mentor program for new members, assigning a Mentor as soon as someone joins the club.

Paul asked that anyone who has extra copies (or old copies) of the Toastmaster magazine bring them in so we can make up more kits for guests to take when they leave a meeting. Paul also wants to get more Toastmaster postcards to mail to guests.

Marvin announced that we have seven of the required ten points for President’s Distinguished Club as of today. When we attend Officer’s Training in Dec-Jan we will earn another point. The last two available points are for CC completions. We have one person poised to complete in December (Chuck) but may have to work some to find at least one more before the end of June. We have two or three people at the 4 speech mark and four more people at the 3 speech mark. So they are all candidates.

Marvin lead a discussion about the election of Officers for the next term. This will have to be held on December 2nd as the first training date is December 6th. Stephen J made a motion that the club pay the $5.00 each for the training for the officers. Chuck seconded the motion and the motion was passed.

Gene began a debate on adding some spice to the meetings by occassionaly doing something different. Everyone agreed that the “Reverse-Order Meeting” was not something we wanted to do. Other suggestions were: a debate meeting, and all-Table-Topics meeting or an all-Evaluation meeting (one target speaker followed by three evaluations followed by three evaluation of the evaluator evaluations (say that three times fast). This will be discussed again in December.

The meeting ajourned at 8:00 am, right on time.

All Officers, Except Paul

Not sure what happened that Paul wasn’t there, but the remainder of the club officers started October with a breakfast meeting.

Andrew called us together and passed out copies of his agenda.

Craig, our webmaster, said that all the Officer’s had completed the questionaires and they had been posted. He has also been working on the double email issue when the weekly meeting role assignments are sent. Plus he has been trying to figure out how to size pictures correctly so they display well on the site. Craig will be travelling most of October and so may not get much done this month.

Since Paul wasn’t there we discussed only one item in Membership. We need more guest packets. Andrew will contact Paul to discuss.

Marvin, our Education VP, discussed our current status toward the Distinguished Club awards. We currently have 6 points and need only seven or more to qualify. If we can get 9 we will repeat as President’s Distinguished Club. (See the page on this Blog which shows the points we can get and our current status.) Marvin is certain we can get the 7th point (Officer training in January) but is concerned about the points for completed CC manuals. There followed a discussion about getting all of our new members enough speech opportunities to complete the CC Manual. Craig remembered that in the past the club has held a second meeting in some weeks devoted entirely to new members giving speeches in the CC Manual.

Gene, our PR VP, has found that we can get free advertising in three newspapers (Plano, Dallas Business Journal, Collin County Business Journal). he plans to submit our meeting information to each of these within the week. Gene explained our Detractor Program (see the Detractor Program page in this blog) and asked for time to explain it at the next meeting. He also plans to write an article about the program for submission to District 50 and the Toastmasters International.

Stephen J, our treasurer, said that 23 people had renewed for this six-month period. The new ribbons for “Best” at each meeting had arrived and were given to Roger for storage.

Roger, our Sergeant-at-Arms, reported that we seem to have enough supplies in the cabinet and that he has had a lot of help setting up the room for club meetings.

Discussion Topics:

Mentor Plan: Marvin has set it up and he encouraged all to get with the mentees and help them understand the roles that happen every week as well as assisting them with the first few speeches.

Recognition: We will set up a club-level award for people completing their fifth CC speech called the “Nickel Award.” Chuck will create the certificates based on Marvin informing him they are needed.

Leadership Track: We discussed emphasizing that people bring their CL manuals so they can get credit for the various roles they have each week. This also helps by making sure they understand what the role actually does and what it means to do it well.

New Officers: Andrew will ask Mike, as Past President, to help discern the next group of officers for the club.

Meeting ajourned on-time and everyone enjoyed their breakfast.

And the Officers Ate Breakfast

The Plano Talkers September Officer’s Meeting was attended by Andrew, Chuck  Paul, Marvin, Roger, Craig and Stephen (order of arrival).  Special Contest Announcement later in this post.

We actually had an agenda and Andrew sent it out before the meeting. Great idea.

Andrew, our President, opened the meeting with an invocation.

First order of business was counting the new members for this half: Morry, Joe, Sonya, Michelle, Tonye and Brian. Because we have 5 or more between July 1st and September 30th, we are invited to the District 50 BBQ in October at White Rock Lake. Details forthcoming. This also gives us 1 and 1/2 points toward the 9 we need to make President’ Distinguished Club for the year. There is a page on this Blog that shows our current status. Special Thanks to Paul our VP of Membership and to all who have updated their information on the website. (New members, we need your pictures on-line soon).

Craig has volunteered to take over the Web Master role as David is not able to continue. Craig was an Officer, in several roles, and former Web Master (before FreeToastHost) for Plano Talkers. Craig wants to use a blue background for pictures and asks that you send them to him directly (webmaster@planotalkers.org) so he can size them and post them. He also plans to bring a camera so we can get pictures of our members. We talked about having a meeting/speech concerning member use of the web site. Look for that soon.

Paul, VP of Membership, lead a further discussion of other ways to get members. These included personal invitations to people you know and/or work with,  and using the Toastmaster Magazine as a recruiting aid at nail salons, beauty shops and barber shops. While the web site seems to attract many visitors, we need to ensure that we try other avenues as well so as to maintain a healthy club membership level.

Marvin, VP of Education, lead a discussion of our progress toward President’s Distinguished Club. It appears that we will meet the membership and new member requirements. Our concern is that we need 4 people to complete the CC Manual (first TM manual) and 2 people to complete the CL (first Leadership Manual). We anticipate that Chuck will get his CC but it isn’t clear who else might complete by the end of June 2009. We also decided to help people meet their CL manual requirements by keeping them at the meeting (on the Visitor sign-in table) so they are available every week. Marvin encourged everyone to update their personal TM goals on the website so we can help everyone meet them through scheduling.

There was a discussion about the number of speeches that are made in the club that are not manual speeches. Marvin mentioned that if a speech doesn’t meet a requirement in the manual you are currently working on, it is acceptable to redo manuals already completed or work in additional manuals that match your individual needs. In fact, we can get credit for CC manual completions from anyone, no matter their current TM education level and they count for Presiden’t Distingusihed Club. The officers decided to encourage all members to only do manual speeches.

Andrew lead a discussion about PR since Gene our VP of PR was absent. Gene is preparing an article about his TM Statistical Analysis Project and how we are seeing good results in both recruiting and retention. he will be examining the corelation betwenn the two. He wants to publish the article in the TM Magazine.

Stephen, our Treasurer, gave us a financial report. We seem to be in good shape especially considering that dues are due and should be collected from all members by September 23rd. Please be sure to get your check for $42.00 to Stephen at the next meeting.

There was discussion about members who join in the last month of the half (March and September). It was decided that the club policy will be to collect 7 months (the month of joining and the next six months) from those people to avoid collecting one month when they join and immediately asking for the next six month’s dues.

Roger, our Sergeant at Arms, reported that despite his crazy work schedule and because of help from Marvin and Bill B, the club meeting room is always set up on time for meetings. Thanks for the help from all members.

Marvin asked for volunteers to Mentor the new members and will be asking again at the next meeting.

A good breakfats was enjoyed by all and YOU can wln a breakfast at the next fficer’s Meeting by answering this question:

What did our President, Andrew (not George W), have for breakfast?

First correct comment to this Blog Post gets to join us for breakfast next month and doesn’t have to volunteer to do anything!!! Better hurry. If you don’t respond, you may be volunteered for something. (just kidding)