September 24, 2007 Minutes

From Austin Toastmasters (Balcones, Club #3407)

Balcones Toastmasters September 24, 2007

Chapter 3407 District 55

Minutes of Meeting

The September 24th meeting was opened a by Vice President Mary Buker.

Vlad Garner jumped back into an active role by serving as Toastmaster. This theme what motivates and inspires you.

• Jennifer Wagner led Prayer & Pledge and Mary Buker and Karen Bondy served as Sergeant at Arms.

• Rick Bradstreet was the Timer and kept time precisely.

• Jennifer Wagner was Grammarian and chose "expectations" for the word for the day. Jennifer has great expectations of motherhood as she is due 10/3! She counted Ums and Ahs from Steve G, Steve L, Anne, Mary and herself. Sonny exceeded expectations with 4 uses of the word of the day but it was used by most everyone else too.

• Amanda Garner was One Minute Toastmaster - Amanda spoke about communicating with people for whom English is not their first language. Slowing down, attempting Spanish and using non-verbals are appreciated by the listener. Make an attempt!

Table Topics Master was Antoinette Griffin. Antoinette built upon the theme with varied questions about advice.

• Karen Bondy - 1:08 - Karen is inspired by Jim Comer. He urged her to come to Toastmasters. Whenever he speaks he is inspiring and compelling.

• Gordon Baker - 1:55 - Gordon's advice to a new Toastmaster was to understand that we all have been there, with our minds totally blank and forgetting to speak our main point. Take it one step at at time and enjoy the trip.

• Melissa Lynott - 0:44 - Melissa spoke of advice given from her parents. She was urged to follow her dreams and not to settle. She followed the advice and was the first one from her family to go to college.

• Scott Perry - 1:17 - Scott inspires himself to do things he doesn't want to do by reaching down deep, grabbing hard, and pulling things up. He urged us to face our fears.

• Jim Comer - winner - 1:54 - Jim inspires people when they see him do things they didn't think he could do. He fought alcoholism for years but when he became sober, people saw him succeed grandly.

Speaker #1 - Sonny Sonntag - 6:57 - "Bernie's Hog" - Sonny told an exciting story of Future Farmer of America Bernie raising a wonderful hog. The hog took top honors locally. Then Sonny and 2 other students took 17 animals to the state fair. 15 of the animals placed: three in 3rd, four in 2nd, and eight in 1st. But when Bernie asked if his hog got first place, Sonny announced that the hog did not even place!

Speaker #2 - Jerry Barrett - 7:34 - "Dare Greatly" - Jerry opened with a quote that it's the folks in the trenches that are great. Pick you cause and work for it. Then he described the Toastmaster structure and the upcoming speaker contest. He urged us to 1) attend a conference, 2) go to officer's training 3) become an officer outside our club and 4) participate in the contest.

Speaker #3 - Steve Gonzalez - winner - 8:10 - "Identity Theft" - Steve told horror stories of identity theft whether individual attacks or massive loss of data from corporations. He warned us to protect ourselves and not give out information that is not required. Sorry, I didn't take very good notes...really, it was much more interesting than my interpretation.

General Evaluator was Lesley Bradstreet. She appreciated Amanda's communication advice.

• Table topics evaluator was Anne Child - 2:50 - Karen developed the "who" and "why" about her inspiration, but how can you talk about Jim without being very animated? Gordon built a good speech with good development and ending with a tip. Melissa did wonderful for her first Table Topic and will soon be embellishing her stories further. Scott dug deep to develop a response but really did inspire us. Jim inspired us with his personal story of the struggle to become sober.

• Evaluator #1 for Sonny was Steve Levering - most improved - 2:10 - Sonny knew all the details of the story, from the 300 watt light bulb to the placements awarded. His hand gestures, body movements, eye contacts all connected with the audience.

• Evaluator #2 for Jerry was Hollis Baker - winner - 2:37 - Jerry has a great voice. He passed out the handouts ahead of time so as not to cause a distraction, opened with an effective Teddy Roosevelt quote, used the ploy of complementing each of us (for being Toastmasters) and was well organized.

• Evaluator #3 for Steve was Mary Buker - 2:13 - Steve really got to the point with his informative speech. He could have spent a little less time on the horror stories and more on the solutions.

Timer and Grammarian gave their reports.

Arthur, returning for his second meeting, was voted into the club.

Mary reviewed the schedule for our next meeting on Monday October 1st.

Future schedules are available at http://www.balconestoastmasters.org/schedule/ .