In keeping with the theme “Relatives,” Mary launched the meeting with musings about the Toastmasters “family” and our club as a “functional family” in which we all have different roles and are at different stages of growth in our skills as presenters and leaders. Two guests and 15 members attended.
Madeleine explains the hassles of contact lenses.
Mark was the first speaker, with a speech entitled “How Our Brains Can Save Us from Ourselves and from the Poor.” This was his third speech from the competent communicator manual. Mark drew on his rich experiences working with the poor and on a wealth of research about the effect of current policies and practices to propose a different system: providing minimum guaranteed income without creating monthly budgeting stress on the recipients.
Nicole delivered the second speech, entitled “Evaluate to Motivate,” from the Successful Club series. She explained the benefits of the evaluations that every Toastmasters meeting features for each speaker. She shared her insights on how to prepare to be an evaluator, along with a helpful handout with suggested structures for evaluations guaranteed to motivate speakers to continue to improve.
Madeleine, the third speaker, launched her speech, “I Can See Clearly Now,” with the eponymous song to describe the way she felt when she got her first (very thick) glasses as a child. She recounted her progression through different stages through life with vision issues, culminating in her cataract surgery, persuading us that getting your eyes operated on is not as scary as it sounds.
Our guest Denise participates in TableTopics.
Nicole awards Shen a ribbon as best evaluator.
Dave, Shen, and Johan gave evaluations of the speeches, and Michelle served as general evaluator. Shen was voted best evaluator.
Our next meeting (and our first meeting of 2014!) is January 11, 2014, starting at 7:30 a.m.
Adrian delivers the grammarian’s report.
