March 21, 2020 “Broken Glass”

Zoom zoom zoom……the Club’s first online meeting at Seattle Sunrise Toastmaster was a Zoom meeting. Our club is changing with the times, as we mobilize to online meetings only from March 21st through June 1, 2020.

Jovica was the Toastmaster in a shorten 1-hour meeting. Introducing the Zoom platform, tips on audio, and video, with enthusiasm. He started the meeting introducing the grammarian Steven, and timer Aleli.

New to the agenda is space for our VPE to give an Educational Moment. Oleg encouraged all of us that it will be a useful learning process for us all to meet online using Zoom.

Something old and something new. Samantha was the Table Topics toastmaster. Highlighting the theme of “broken glass”, she ran a mysterious criminal inquiry of our members. In a court-room setting, asking the volunteers to plead guilty or innocent to the scenarios, each participant had a unique charge to address. One of our most popular table topics ever, there were 7 volunteers that participated. Paula and Bill once again injected such creative and funny answers as they denied the charges.

We had one speaker, Bill, who repeated one of his most inspiring speeches, titled “Mindfulness for Coronavirus Anxiety”. Bill walked us through two exercises, one for deep breathing meditation and another exercise called RAIN. The breathing set us all up to be receptive and reflective. Bill then taught us the RAIN acronym, which is an ancient Buddhist mindfulness tool to cope with hardship. It has four steps:

1. Recognize what is going on
2. Allow the experience to be there, just as it is
3. Investigate with kindness
4. Natural awareness, which comes from not identifying with the experience.

Another change to the online agenda is the evaluation section of the meeting. Previously, the toastmaster facilitated this section. On the online meeting, the general evaluator would introduce this section and facilitate all the evaluators, including the evaluators, timer report, and grammarian report. Jimmy evaluated Bill’s speech and conducted a round-robin of impromptu evaluators. Jovica, Petar, Aleli, Scott, and Sam had words for Bill presentation, all positive praises for a pertinent and helpful speech, commenting even on his choice of a peaceful background.

The toastmaster finished his role of the day and handed the meeting to VPE to review the assigned roles for next meeting. The Club President closed the meeting, asking for feedback of the members for the 1st ever online meeting for the Club and boy, almost everyone gave their feedbacks. Ending the meeting at 9:15 AM, we all quickly zoom out of the meeting.