Contest – Laughing all the way!

Tuesday the 5th of August was Humorous Speech and Tall Tales Contest day at Plano Talkers.

Andrew opened the meeting right on time and Carol led us in the invocation and pledge.

Chuck was the Contest Master. He was assisted by the Chief Judge Bill S., the Timers Paul and Rick, and Jerry was the Sergeant at Arms. Jerry and Bill counted the ballots.

After a brief introduction of the contest rules and instruction on the proper use of the ballot form, the speaking began. Our humorous speakers were:

Mike: “How to Succed in College without Really Trying” where we learned that honesty is the best policy.

Mary was the “Big Rig Mama” who learned that you can put up with almost anything (even bugs in the shower) if you have an experienced guide who becomes your friend.

Gene continues to cheer for the Rangers which is funny in itself but he told us many reasons why “Baseball is a Funny Game.” We didn’t even know there was a “Bench Coach.”

After all the laughing, the silence while the judges completed their work was almost deafening. Finally the Chief Judge left and we learned that Mike and Mary had told us real-life experiences and that Gene had always found the Bench Coach funny.

Once the Chief Judge returned, we began the Tall Tales competition.

Stephen J. told the “Tale of Two Hairs” and had us all all spellbound right to the very last.

Bill told of his experience with a UFO.

The Chief Judge left to count the ballots and we determind that Stephen tells stories to his daughter when they ride in the car and Bill had described a real-life scenario, except for the UFO part.

The Winners will represent the Club in the Area 46 Contest on September 5th (location to be announced):

Best Humorous Speech: Mike

Runner-up: Mary

Best Tall Tale: Stephen J.

Congratulations to the winners! The flyer for the Area Contest will be distributed as soon as it is available. Hope to see the entire Club come out to cheer on our contestants.

We adjourned a few minutes late so earned one detractor.

Club Officer’s Training – Summer 2008

While most of our Officers attended training on June 28th, I attended on July 12th. So I didn’t get to share notes with everyone. However, I took some notes on the ideas presented and felt these were ones that should be shared with membership.

1. President’s Distinguished Club: This is a great program for ensuring that the club is being responsive to Toastmaster’s International and their mission for the organization. But as club officers it’s our job to ensure that we keep an eye on the mission and goals of the individual members. To maintain a vibrant club where our members are achieving their goals needs to be very high on the list of club priorities.

2. We are approaching our Fall speech contests (Tall Tales and Humor). We should be looking for ways to publicize this event to draw attention and possibly new members. We can also make manual completions and other events into news articles for local publication.

3. Membership contest idea: The District will have four membership contests this year (see the District50Toastmaster.org site for more details). We might divide the membership into teams of four to six people and have a competition within the club, with suitable rewards for “most” or “quota achievement”.

4. Another way to get more members is to make each meeting so much fun that all the members go to work and talk about it. Others may get the good idea to visit us.

5. Our club meeting need to be seen as a safe place to practice presentations we make as a part of our working life. Even if you use only the opening of your presentation as a Toastmaster speech, you get to practice and get feedback (evaluation).

6. Remember that Evaluation includes both “I liked ….” and “I thought you could have done _____ better.”

7. Invite someone “interesting” to the club to make a speech and then publicize it to draw prospective members.

8. Ours is not a company-sponsored club but that doesn’t mean that you can’t invite people from your company. Try saying,” Hi Joe, I’m making a speech about ____ and I know you have an interest in that. Will you join me at Toastmasters?” Another idea is to invite your boss to come and see you when you make a speech that completes a manual.

I encourage any member who wants more ideas on Toastmasters to attend any of the District Officer Trainings. They have sessions for Officers, of course. But they also have other sessions, such as: “Advanced Officers (working as a Team for club success); “A Holistic Approach to Effective TM Meetings”; “The Long and SHort of Tall Tales”; “Masterful Contest Master Training”; and “Using Stories for Influential Speeches.”

Calling All Officers -July 3rd

The first meeting of the new term for club officers was held on Thursday July 3rd, 2008 at the Original House of Pancakes (Central at Park, NW corner).

Attendees: Andrew, Marvin, Gene, Paul, Stephen J and me (Chuck).

We currently have 26 active members in the club and we all agreed that we need to be continually recruiting new members because of the natural turnover that occurs.

The club was recently awarded the President’s Distinguished Club award. The officers all agreed that continuing to work toward that goal will help keep the club fun and interesting because members will meet their goals too.

As President, Andrew would like to focus on new members this term. He said that the last 4 new members came to us because of the web site. There was some general discussion about improvements to the website that might make a difference. Ideas included: this blog, photos, a sign-up page (squeeze page in Internet Marketing lingo) and a ‘How to Join” page.

Andrew further wants to be sure we officers are all responding to email from Toastmasters HQ and the Area/District. We just need to be sure we are including them in our activities and responding to their requirements in a timely manner.

Gene, VP of Public Relations, reviewed his chart of “Detractors”. These are the items he has been tracking each week to help the club understand how well organized we are. The detractors include: having an agenda for each meeting, including speech titles on the agenda, having three speehes each meeting, and starting and ending on-time. During the 5 weeks of zero detractors in a row we gained four new members.

Gene would also like to get everyone to update their biography on the web.

Paul, VP Membership, is working on ideas for a new visitor’s packet, a membership drive (contest?), using the Toastmasters Magazine, and using post cards and other mailings to all guests and attending members after each meeting. We need to keep active members happy too.

Stephen, Treasurer, reported that the treasury is approximately the same size as it was 6 months ago (a normal cycle for us).  When our previous secretary left there were a couple receipts not found but the amounts are very small and we decided not to worry about them.

Stephen proposed that we replace the Successful Club Series ($45.00) since the one we currently have is outdated and pretty-well worn out. This expense was approved.

Marvin, VP Education, has updated the Club Scheduler so that the on-line schedule for each meeting is up to date until August 5th. There was a discussion about someone giving a speech explaining the club website and the changes we are enacting. Marvin will work on scheduling such a speech.

As VP of Education, Marvin wants to put more emphasis on the CL Manual (Leadership) and Member retention. There followed a discussion of the Fall Speech Contest. This contest has two elements Tall Tales (4 to 6 minutes) and Humor (5 to 7 minutes). We decided to hold the Club contest on August 5th at the normal meeting time and place.

We ended the meeting with a discussion of setting up this Blog. The Blog is controlled by the Club Secretary. Comments on Blog posts may be made by any active member by logging in. All comments will be monitored by the secretary.

We ended on-time. Zero Detractors.