Steven our outgoing President called the meeting to order. Paula was our esteemed Toastmaster and looked back at the growth and development of our officers this past year. Our Timer extraordinaire was Aleli, and Kathy picked the word of the day “Pride” as she fulfilled the role of the Grammarian.
Lidia asked questions about who, what, where, and how we renew ourselves during the one minute impromptu portion of our meeting called Table Topics. This is a time to voluntarily speak for a short duration to practice conversational speaking.
Having a structured agenda each week contributes to the success of our meetings because everyone knows their roles and expectations before each meeting. Our General Evaluator and now incoming President Lara had an ask for each of us to commit to arriving early so the meeting will start smoothly and on time.
Steven was our first speaker and placed himself in a story for when the “big one” hits. His visual aid survival bag was a good way to keep us interested in his story. Feedback to make his informative speech shine included to share more emotional impact of this devastating scenario.
Jimmy used descriptive buzz words -narcissist, lazy, entitled, for his speech “the worst generation”, that were familiar yet caught our attention. The use of repetition, “me, me, me, generation” had a powerful impact. He met his objectives to help the audience understand diversity. Feedback was positive for word choice, and to consider keeping his energy up as he completed his speech.
Brett shared how failure can be a learning experience and shared a process of setting a goal and time frame to achieve it. His speeches are informative, funny, insightful, and have a purpose, main points with examples, smooth transitions, and a call to action in his closing remarks. He used the space of the front of the room very well, and demonstrated actions for vocal variety. All these techniques are part of a well delivered speech. Feedback to make his speech even better included using larger gestures to emphasize a point.
Dave’s humorous speech painted a powerful scene as he set the stage and kept us all in suspense and guessing as his tale took us into his story of a dark night, a cool 80 degrees, powerful voices floating in the air, and an action -packed story that was gripping from the beginning to the end. He used wonderful vocal variety and pauses that packed a punch after loud, forceful commands, “HALT, DROP TO YOUR KNEES, FACEPLANT, and DO NOT MOVE!! The ending was hilarious.Feedback was scarce. Knowing the objectives of the speech will help in giving feedback next time. This process of feedback is to reconstruct or rebuild the speech in a way to add missed elements/objectives in a speech.
The next meeting will be later due to the NWH cafeteria changing their hours of operation. Contact Sunrisers Toastmasters for more information.
Professional Development Specialist Medical Surgical Nursing.
