Once again, we met in the BYK Conference Center – an interesting
change from our usual venue.
Jaime
Fisher, our Sergeant at Arms was first on the scene to ensure the room was
ready for the night and to open the meeting with the bang of the gavel.
Eagles President Ute
Brinkmann announced that next meeting (Dec. 18) is the holiday-themed meeting,
and everyone may contribute by bringing something delicious to share. (Sign up
on the agenda!) Perhaps some holiday attire, if you’ve got an ugly sweater you’re
itching to show off?
Tom Corrigan was the
Toastmaster for the evening. 16 members and 8 guests (yes 8!) were present.
Robin Corrigan
was the humorist and told a funny story about a failed attempt to impress
someone.
Robin also presented the Quote of the Day – from Adam Steltzner’s
book The Right Kind of Crazy. I failed
to write down what his quote actually was, but take a moment to Google him if
you don’t know who he is – he’s an incredibly interesting guy! I think I’ll be
reading that book!
Grammarian Paula
Erardi presented the word of the day, which was Complicity.
Tony Centorino
was Tabletopics Master and used the time to crowdsource us for ideas on how to
get clubs to gain more visitors and members. Along the idea of having themed
meetings, he asked us to speak for 2 minutes on various themes, such as books,
travel, children, and music. Heather, Jaime, Paula and Robin all participated.
Our first speaker of the evening was the club’s prodigal son,
Curtis Reddick. (Welcome back to the
club, Curtis!) Curtis spoke from the Competent Communication Manual, project #
9 (Persuade with Power). Curtis’ speech was titled Rebel Against Mediocrity. Curtis packed his speech with information
about how we can better ourselves. Just by being part of Toastmasters, we strive
to rise above the status quo! He recommended a book called Organize Tomorrow Today, and reminded us that consistent behavior
is what leads to change.
Nilani Shankar was
up next, completing project #3 (Get to the Point) from the Competent
Communication Manual. Nilani spoke about how she was introduced to the
therapeutic techniques of tapping and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) from a
fellow graduate student at UConn. She took us through the history of these therapies
and even had us participate in a quick demo of self-tapping.
Speaker #3 was yours truly, Heather McKelvie. I chose project #1 (Speaking to Inform) from the Advanced
Communication Series, Speaking to Inform. In The
Art of Zentangle, I attempted to introduce Zentangle to the group,
explaining what it is, how it got started, and then how to do it. I brought
examples of Zentangle books, as well as my own artwork, and even did a quick
demo on the easel, but unfortunately, I found the time was up before I had
completed the speech! Lesson learned: You can’t fit 20 minutes’ worth of
material in a 5-7-minute speech!
Kate Kelly closed
out the speech portion of the evening with her speech, entitled Take a Giant Hike. Her title was a play
on words, as she talked to us about hiking at Sleeping Giant! A big part of her
speech was on the importance of having a trail map so that you can anticipate
the type of terrain you’ll be encountering, and find a gentle way back to the
parking lot once you’ve had enough.
Jaime Fisher was
our General Evaluator. Kate Kelly, Robin Corrigan, Sandra Centorino and Tony Centorino evaluated each speech respectively.
Other functionaries were: Curtis Reddick, Ah-Counter, and Stephen McGirr, Timer.
Our next meeting will be held on Monday, December 18th
at BYK. It will be a holiday-themed meeting and will include pot-luck. Be sure
to see the agenda on eagletoastmasters.com to sign up!
See you then!
Heather McKelvie
Eagle Secretary
No comments:
Post a Comment