We had a terrific turnout at this week’s meeting of Seattle Sunrise Toastmasters, and it’s no wonder, given the agenda. We welcomed four of our most experienced speakers to the podium for a menu of well-crafted and strongly delivered speeches, followed by a panel of evaluators made up of several of our veterans, all of whom gave spot-on feedback, digging into these speeches to recognize the best parts and doing the important and often difficult work of finding room for improvement.
Nicole C, our Vice President of Education and this week’s Toastmaster, was responsible for putting this terrific meeting together. We departed from our usual meeting format, foregoing Table Topics between speeches and evaluations to allow enough time for these four experienced speakers to deliver longer speeches. Even so, we did go over time for the meeting, which is a rarity at Sunrise, but it was well worth it. Nicole also filled time between speeches by providing useful information about how the Toastmasters manuals can best be used. (For newer members: you can always contact your mentor or one of the club officers if you need advice on how to use the manuals.)
Scott C was our first speaker. Scott is a Distinguished Toastmaster and is revisiting the CC guide for the third (THIRD!) time around, with his CC Project #3, “Truth, Lies, and Facebook.” In the speech, he discussed ways in which you can spot, validate, and help stop the proliferation of dubiously sourced and even more
dubiously factual memes that regularly circulate on social media platforms such as Facebook. He examined one of the legion of Facebook memes which makes false claims, walking us through various ways to validate it to see whether the claims it makes are legit or bogus, including searching for the memes on debunking sites such as Snopes.com. He then made a recommendation for how to help stop bogus memes: do nothing. Don’t engage with them at all. Don’t get into flame wars in the comments section. The reason is that typical social media algorithms promote posts for any kind of engagement and the more action they get–even negative action–the more they are promoted and disseminated. Education is the key. Excellent advice, Scott. Thanks!
Our next speaker was club President, Peter F who, like Scott, has finished his CC but is revisiting it, delivering his second CC project 10 speech, “How to Live with Passion.” This is one of the speeches Peter has been work-shopping with us to eventually use on his transformation coaching web site, “Conquer Any Fear.” His speech explored the nature of happiness and living fully, citing Helen Keller’s quote “Life is a daily adventure or nothing at all.” Peter is a strong believer in facing fears, and he said that we can and should use our fear as a compass. In whatever direction we fear to go, that is the direction we must go, he said. Only by facing fear can life be the adventure rather than nothing. A passionate and engaging speech, Peter! Additionally, later Saturday afternoon, Peter competed at the Division B International Speech and Evaluation contests and brought home two prizes, placing second in each. Congratulations and thanks for always doing such a strong job representing our club, Mr. President!
Dave E spoke next. Dave is one of our club’s founding members and he delivered the last speech required to earn his Advance Communicator Silver. This speech, from the Successful Club Series, was “Meeting Roles and Responsibilities.” For those unfamiliar with the speeches, the structure is set by Toastmasters International and the speaker breathes life into them. Dave used his skill as a teacher and trainer as well as a speaker to walk us through the subject matter of what each Toastmaster role does and their importance to each meeting as well as the overall health and success of the club. I always learn something new whenever I hear one of these speeches and this was no exception. Thanks Dave, and congratulations on your achievement!
Our final speaker was Mark W, delivering his speech “Letting Science Speak Through Our Belief Systems,” his Project 4 speech from the Persuasive Speaking Manual. The first objective of this project is to present a speech on a controversial subject to persuade the audience. Mark took on the weighty subject of how the progress of science is impeded by human emotions and beliefs. He discussed how science has increasingly supplanted superstition over the centuries of human history, to the point that now take for granted many of the lessons of science that once were considered outlandish, impossible, or heretical. Mark noted that even in contemporary times, new scientific discovery and development continues to meet with opposition which is frequently based not on evidence but emotion, particularly when evidence threatens deeply held beliefs. Mark used the topic of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) as an example, a topic sufficiently controversial that it made for a lively follow-up Q&A session. (The Q&A fulfills the second part of this project’s objectives, which is to address opposing viewpoints following the speech.) A very interesting and bold speech, Mark. Thanks!
We moved directly into the evaluations for the speeches, with Katey N, Steve W, Marti M, and Michelle D providing feedback to the four speakers and Tina H serving as General Evaluator. Katey won the ribbon for Best Evaluator for her feedback on Scott’s speech. Congratulations, Katey!
Paula L was our Timer for our meeting, and Nicole S was our Grammarian, bringing her word of the day “Nebulous,” which was used several times during the meeting.
YanYan returned as a guest and once again impressed us with her thoughtful feedback following the meeting. Hopefully we can persuade her to become a member as she clearly has a lot to add to our group.
Our next meeting will be May 7. Our theme will be “Mother, Mommy, Mama, Mom,” and one of our club’s newest mothers, Andrea S, will be Toastmaster.
Hope to see you there!
I'm a writer, editor, sit-down comedian, and keeper of many hobbies.
