November 5, 2007 Minutes
From Austin Toastmasters (Balcones, Club #3407)
Balcones Toastmasters November 5, 2007
Chapter 3407 District 55
Minutes of Meeting
The November 5th meeting was opened a few minutes late a by President Jonathan Huizingh.
- Hollis Baker led Prayer & Pledge and served as Sergeant at Arms.
- Amanda Garner took her first spin at Toastmaster introduced everyone with their thoughts on Daylight Savings Time. She did wonderful job.
- Amy Always took her first spin at Timer, kept track of varying speech lengths and gave a great report.
- Jerry Barrett was the Grammarian and chose "panache" (verve, style, flare) as the word of the day. It was used by Jonathan, Hollis, Harry, Steve G, Sonny, Karen and others. He graded us on protocol and counted many ums and ahs with John Allert being the Wizard of Ahs.
- Jonathan Huizingh was One Minute Toastmaster and urged us to fill well whatever role we are performing each week.
Harry Savio was Table Topics Master. He asked varied and probing questions about Daylight Savings Time which were never directly answered.
- Glenn Nielsen - 1:09 - Glenn explained how he liked the automatically adjusting clocks but felt frustrated when sales people could not answer if their clocks were programmed to the new change schedule.
- John McMillan - 0:59 - John used his extra hour to write to the Christian Science Monitor with ideas for stories they could write.
- Mary Buker - winner - 1:19 - Mary related that it's hard to adjust to the time change in the Spring but she enjoyed the extra hour of sleep in the Fall, especially this year as she had not slept well for 2 nights, fretting about a speech and being at a camp.
Speaker #1 - Steve Gonzales - winner & most improved - 7:23 - "Who's your mama? Where did you go to school? Can you make a roux?" - Steve taught us these 3 important questions to ask in New Orleans when you meet someone. The first two determine the six degrees of separation and thus if you are from someone they know so are accepted. The second is based on their philosophy of "living to eat, not eating to live." A proper upbringing means you care about the dedication it takes to make a good roux.
Speaker #2 - John Allert - 9:00 - "Philosophy of Parenting" - John and his wife have based their parenting decisions on how to best bring God into their children's lives. He feels your view of God determines everything about you. The main goal is to love, server, honor, and enjoy God, especially love. He explained about, Talking, tieing and writing about God.
Speaker # 3 - Vlad Garner - 9:58 - "Play Your Own Game" - Vlad inspired us with lessons he has learned from coaching 8 & 9 year olds to play soccer when he knows nothing about it. There's no "I" in team but there is a "m" and an "e". Each kid ends up playing his own game and viewing their accomplishments from their perspective. While he is trying to get them to play each position and learn the team spirit, he has learned that finding each kid's strengths and allowing that to shine works best. He related this to finding your own passion and natural strengths as we are our own coach, goalie and spectator. This was Vlad's 10th speech so he has completed the Competent Communicator speeches!
General Evaluator was Gordon Baker. Gordon appreciated Amanda's Toastmaster efforts as good introductions make a difference.
- Table topics evaluator was Rick Bradstreet - winner - 3:40 - Harry led with hard questions and everyone played their own game. Glenn made up a story, putting himself into a dilemma and describing how he hates being there. John M comes up with brilliant off the wall ideas (Puritan cookies) and feels guilty about not having eaten Boston baked beans. Mary talks about herself and her sleepless nights with detail and energy.
- Evaluator #1 for Steve G was Sonny Sonntag - 2:43 - Steve always amazes Sonny. He gave us a picture of foods in New Orleans. He was good in voice and appearance. He held his hands in the middle but overall did a very good job.
- Evaluator #2 for Johan A was Karen Bondy - 3:19 - John's enthusiasm lit up the whole room. He engaged everyone with questions and had good gestures. He had sincerity and conviction. When he read the Bible passage, he could have use the same excitement he used when telling the great family stories.
- Evaluator #3 for Vlad was Anne Child - 2:30 - Vlad used quotes and humor well. His gestures were good for the discussion and seemed very natural. His speech had good pacing and he slowed down to emphasize some sections well. He did look at the floor (in a very thoughtful looking way) and stuck his hand in his pocket (which seemed like natural Vlad).
Timer and Grammarian gave their reports.
Hollis made two motions. 1) don't read the schedule at the end of the meeting. 2) don't have One Minute Toastmasters. Each was discussed with pros and cons energetically by the group. We decided to 1) keep the schedule reading as it helps alleviate a few of the role changes and 2) keep the One Minute Toastmaster as that is a good way for new folks to learn some of the basics of Toastmasters.
We did agree that we shall try to limit the times for the main speeches.
1) Only one person is allowed to request more time for their speech per week. It will be first come first served via email.
2) Anyone going over the allotted time (30 seconds over the upper time limit) will not be able to receive a ribbon for that speech.
Now that's incentive to get your speech prepared and practiced early and to stay within the time limits!
We did NOT review the schedule for our next meeting on Monday November 12th so please review the schedule at http://www.balconestoastmasters.org/schedule/ soon and report any roles you are not able to fill ASAP. There is already an opening for Speaker #1.
The District Converence and competitions are Nov 16-17. It's $110 to attend both days but only $20 to attend the competition.
December 8th is our Christmas party (dinner and gift exchange) at Antoinette's house.
