November 9, 2009 Minutes

From Austin Toastmasters (Balcones, Club #3407)

Our Toastmaster was Peter Ryon, who chose the theme of "mentors." His father was his mentor.

Peter asked our guest, Patricia Williams, to introduce herself. She is looking forward to joining our group.

Timekeeper was Edwin DeAngel. His mentor advised him to always have a mentor and to always be a mentoree. He gave a thorough report. All participants were in time and eligible for an award.

Gordon Baker was the Grammarian. Gordon's mentor was Rick Bradstreet, who taught him to look at his thoughts and think of himself with no judgment. His word of the day was "paucity," meaning scarcity; smallness of quantity, and which was used often during the meeting.

Brian Cronin was our One Minute Toastmaster. His mentor was Dr. Jeffrey Nicholas, who was very instrumental in helping him throughout graduate school and his PHD program. Brian told us about "making our C.A.S.E." When questioned about what we do, we should make our CASE: C=Company, A=Assignment, S=Story, E=End with a question.

Table Topics Master was Sonny Sonntag, who was mentored by Howard Baker, who gave Sonny a lot of ideas that he's used in Toastmasters.

• Jim Comer - Best Table Topic - has 2 aims. First to enlarge his spiritual life to be as large as his material life and second, to help as many people as possible with communication issues and aging parents.
• Keith Taylor is looking forward to mentoring in Toastmasters. He wants to stop verbally vomiting on people and explain his thoughts clearly.
• Bill Williams joined Toastmasters to keep his hands out of his pockets and improve his speaking skills. He attended TM in the 80's but didn't give it a lot of effort. He's enjoying it a lot this time around.

Sylvester Levario gave a speech entitled "One Minute." He shared many statistics about one minute, including that there are 1,440 minutes in one day and 1 person/min. dies of cancer. There are 79,000 minutes before 2010 arrives...less when you are reading this. He also gave some fun quotes about minutes, such as "in a New York minute" and "reputations are created every day by how you live your minutes."

Jason Boehle - Best Speaker and Most Improved - gave a speech entitled "Three Ways of Living the Simple Life." This speech was a manual speech called "Leave them with a smile." First, we should know that it is possible to live a simple life. Second, we need to be present, like the Zen masters who live in the moment. Third, we need to live within ourselves and find out what it is that we really want to do. Jason also told a poignant story about a Mexican fisherman living the simple life.

Fred Maynard's manual speech on using visual aids was entitled "Control Systems Projects." Challenges are what all CSP's have in common. When he hears "All ya gotta do is..." he knows there are going to be problems. He used a Power Point presentation to take us through ways that AWC can become our team of experts and help us achieve our goals.

The General Evaluator was Priscilla Oehlert. She never had a mentor, but is still open to the idea. The content of the meeting was very provoking and the delivery of every role top notch.

Steve Gonzales was the Table Topics Evaluator. Ken Reagan hired him when he shouldn't have for a job he shouldn't have given him and Steve's been grateful ever since. Sonny was soft-spoken and thoughtful, which causes us all to stop and think. Jim Comer was very calm...for Jim. Keith and Bill showed not an abundance of energy or loudness because of the thoughtfulness of the question.

Glenn Nielsen - Best Evaluator - evaluated Sylvester. Glenn's mentor was Bill Thompson, a Toastmasters mentor. Sylvester got the point across very well that our minutes are important, but might want to balance some of the death and destruction stats with birth and other positive ones. He said that 83% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Watch hand-rubbing and losing connection with the audience by reading.

Guoen Wang evaluated Jason. He had mentors in school while studying Chinese medicine. Jason has a great voice and is very funny. When the cell phone went off, Jason paused, but got back on track. Remember to acknowledge the obvious.

Rohit Chaube evaluated Fred. Rohit's mentor told him that to enjoy one's work and learn how to inspire, one of the things a person should know well in life is public speaking. Fred's visuals were a little small for the back of the room in a few places. His speech was very well organized and he used great examples, like building the bathroom. His favorite line was "Can't you just program around it?"

Comments:

• Patricia Williams - great meeting. Patricia was voted in as our newest member.
• Esualdo - enjoys waking up on Monday mornings now that he has TM.
• Charlie Cole - apologized for the phone call, but his daughter is ill with 103 temp.
• Jerry Barrett - We have a new pink ribbon on our banner - a prize for the Jack Rabbit Dash.
• Jim Comer is doing a presentation skills workshop on M/W from 6-10.