President and Toastmaster of the Day, Lara opens the meeting with inducting the new members of the Club, welcoming Vivi, Moises, and Judy, who recited the members promised, as Lara shared the script on the Zoom screen. Lara was also the Toastmaster of the Day, wearing many hats for this meeting, she started the meeting to the audience by announcing that it was her last meeting as the President, and Paula the incoming President, will start at the beginning of July 1st. The theme of “American Dream” was introduced first as the agenda was discussed. This followed by the introduction of the Timer and Grammarian. Lara closed the Opening Section with the the Education Moment, which was delivered by Young. He shared the Toastmaster way of providing and receiving an evaluation, as our educational moment of the day.

Table Topics is a long-standing Toastmasters tradition intended to help members develop their ability to organize their thoughts quickly and respond to an impromptu question or topic. It typically begins after the prepared speech presentations during our in-person meetings. For the Zoom meetings, to allow early interactive participation, it’s perform in the early part of the meeting. Jovica was the table topic master for this meeting. Due to limited time, there were only two volunteers to answer these two questions. “What is the definition of the American Dream”, answered by Bill. “What is the one word that describes the America Dream”, answered by Vivi.

The Prepared Speakers were two in number. Brian was a second time visitor, and guest at our Club. He delivered Project #5 story of Apollo and Daphne from the Storytelling Manual. Judy gave a speech titled “Coming Full Circle”, from her Level 1 icebreaker project form Presentation Mastery Pathways.

The general evaluator was Jimmy, who introduced this section to the audience, along with each respective evaluator, facilitating between each evaluator and finally providing his overall critique of the meeting. Steven provided an opportunity for improvement to Brian by suggesting to bring the characters to live with more drama and physical gestures, and to introduce the story itself within the speech. Hannah was the evaluator two. First time evaluating at the club, she provided a positive and supporting criticism of Judy’s icebreaker.

Lara as Toastmaster of the day, concluded the meeting and handed off the meeting to herself, as the President. She spent 10 minutes or so reflecting on her one year journey as the Club’s President, her intentions, giving some announcements on the officer change over. Then she lead the officer installment.

Is it shocking that a millennial Toastmaster schooled the rest of us on 70s Rock Music? With his tenor voice, Jimmy started his introductions with data from the Billboard Music, merging the statistics with commentary highlights on the inequality of representation of black artist and women. Who is Sister Rosetta Tharpe and where is her tombstone? Then another shock to wake us up in the early morning meeting, Traci, as the grammarian gave us the word of the day, “Bitchen” and “Skinny”, which were throw-backs to 70s vernaculars. That’s how the meeting started, with shock and laughter.

Paula led as the Table Topics Master and provided a lighter side of the meeting. Answering impromptu questions, Jovica, Judy, and Steven quip on gossip, favorite snack, and walking on the wild side.

We had two speakers, Jovica and Young, who prepared their speeches on two different topics. Jovica finishing his 5th project assignment in the Technical Presentations advance manual, gave a technical talk on the platform Canvas, an online collegiate platform for remote classes period of our days. Young gave his speech on Pathways Presentation Master Level 1 with a titled, “If you had 10 million dollars”. Each of our presenters experimented on their delivery and experienced the reward of growth. It is interesting to calibrate and adapt to presenting projects in-person versus in a remote Zoom platform.

The evaluation section was at the end of the meeting. Aleli evaluated Jovica against his project 5 assignment objectives. Bill evaluated Young on his project delivery. Steven evaluated the general meeting thoroughly and encouraged all members to come early and not late to the regular meetings.

The meeting started at 8:01 AM and ended at 9:15AM. Paula, the meeting presider ended with words of encouragement and reminder to members that the Zoom bridge will be changing starting next meeting, and the outgoing officers will end their term at the end of the month.

Scott provided theme of the meeting, as the presider and president introduced him as the Toastmaster of the Day. With his calm voice, Scott introduced the theme, and the other meeting roles, the Timer Isabella and Grammarian Paula. Petar was the table topics master. Jovica was the General evaluator who facilitated the last section of the meeting.

Aleli provided an impromptu pocket speech, not aligned to a particular education manual for 8:07. She shared her personal letter to her dad and had call to action for the members to call their love ones today. Bill spoke for 7:41 on Born Again, from the Project #4 Competent Communicator legacy manual, on the topic of equity and his changed views.

The evaluation section is one of most treasured sections of the Toastmaster meeting. It’s a section that is not prepared and demands the evaluator to improve in active listening, critical thinking, and delivering positive and useful feedback. They say it’s the heart of the toastmaster education program, the evaluations, as you observe the speeches and offer evaluations for your requested areas. Jovica introduced this section and the chosen evaluators, Young and Steven. Young provided his evaluation of Aleli’s letter-reading icebreaker. Steven provided his evaluation of Bill’s presentation, commenting that the gestures did not match the tone of the serious of the speech overall. For example, Bill started his speech with large gestures of falling over the side of his chair, but his speech was very serious with the sub-theme of the Black Lives Matter. Steven commented that when gestures and content are incongruent, it’s makes the audience feel uncomfortable.

The Toastmaster of the Day requested that club go back to its traditional practice of voting on the best table topics speaker and best evaluator. We took a virtual vote within the Zoom platform chat window. It was a tie for the table topics best speaker between Traci, Lara, and Judy. The best evaluator was awarded to Steven Ward.

Starting at 08:05 AM, with the help of Paula’s shared screen, the agenda was was viewable on the Zoom screen as the meeting started. While there was a dark overcast, with ominous clouds and quiet thunder weather conditions, inside the warmth of our own homes, we stayed dry from the rain, as we joined the regular meeting via Zoom VTC. Bill was the toastmaster of the day and he introduced the theme of the day, “Compassionate Fatigue Remedies”.

Lara facilitated the table topics with questions for volunteers. “If you could be anything in the world, who would you be? [Petar]. “What brought you joy in your younger years?” [Young]. “Who is your favorite super hero and why?” [Paula]. Due to late start we had only 3 volunteers for the extemporaneous speeches, and Bill quickly ushered the audience to the next section for prepared speeches.

We had two speakers, who spoke with passioned and clear messages. Steven shared with the the TM club that he is humbly thinking of idea for social media, as he accepted the election to be the new VP Public Relations for the Club. Steven shared his vision “laziness” for social media and yet he plans to be more active and ask the Club to also be more active in using tools to promote the Club, increase PR and using the FB platform in a new way. Steven asked for feedback for his ideas either today or email him directly. Traci spoke about “Courage Over Comfort” via her lessons from the book Building a Story Brand, hitting some key points from the book and providing a handout via email.

Paula facilitated the Evaluation sections, and introduced the main evaluators. Sam provided feedback to Steven on his overall presentation, commenting on the content and delivery. She suggested considering having less gestures in Zoom forum in comparison to in-person presentation. Scott evaluated Traci’s presentation, congratulating her on the completion of Classic Manual “Competent Communicator” and starting her first advance presentation. Scott suggested improvements in the area of revising the opening and clarifying on speech content. One stretch goal, Scott suggested for Traci, is to find a balance of prepared versus improvisational, experimenting where that level is where you start to see the comfort-zone and go beyond, to orient the speech to be both prepared and natural. There were three or four volunteers for the round robin evaluation, which either Samantha or Scott solicited from the audience. Paula wrap up the evaluation section with thanking the evaluators and reminding the audience of the “sandwich” method. Due to agenda delays, Paula quickly transitioned the meeting back to the toastmaster.

We had seventeen (17) people attend the zoom meeting on this overcast raining day. There were 3 guests: Vivi, Milton, and Jeff. It’s the end of May with one month left before the change of the officer-committee for the next fiscal year. Please remember, that our Club does not meet on the 1st Saturday of the month. The next meeting will be Saturday June 13, 2020 on the same Zoom bridge.