Meeting of May 23, 2012

I chaired the meeting today. At my club, the chair is also the Toastmaster. One of the speakers copped out at the eleventh hour. She sent the email to me instead of the whole club making it my responsibility to get a second speaker. It was a low turnout so we had to double up the roles. The first speaker did his icebreaker and the second speaker did the "In Praise of" project from the Special Occasion Speeches manual. Unfortunately, the member who he spoke about didn't come to the meeting and this member later told me he'd be coming next week and it would be his last meeting with us. We will miss him. I guess it's human nature to become fond of people. I like this young man. Even though he has a disability, he has a lot of spirit.

The presiding officers all neglected to instruct the Timer today. I mentioned this at the end of the meeting. I usually follow the agenda closely and the time for the second speech was not written on the agenda and so I didn't instruct the Timer. There was no excuse for forgetting to instruct the Timer for the first speech. We started the meeting late today and I think there was a feeling of haste so maybe that had something to do with it.

The Table Topicsmaster was so pleased by my choice of advanced manuals that he talked about it while doing his role. He even mentioned that I had said not to do things like that but he was so pleased that he said he wanted to thank me for what he considered to be the best manuals for him. I chose Speaking to Inform and Special Occasion Speeches. The President gave him his CC pin at the end of the meeting.

I decided to speak again next week. I have company coming from the U.S. but I want to finish my ACG by the  last meeting of the year. So I'll have to do two speeches in June. I have material for all three speeches so it won't be that time consuming.

Genivar GTA Toastmasters

Food poisoning and work prevented me from attending the previous two meetings of Genivar GTA Toastmasters. I spoke for about ten minutes at the end of the meeting. They still don't have a lectern but there was a makeshift cardboard lectern there. I brought mine again and we used it.

1. I said that the lectern is the focal point of a Toastmasters meeting and it must never be left unattended. The protocol is for the person at the lectern to call up the next person and shake his hand before turning it over.
2. Toastmasters meetings are thematic which means that the Chair chooses the theme, and the Grammarian chooses the word of the day and the Table Topicsmaster chooses topics to reflect that theme.
3. All presiding officers must instruct the Timer when to turn on the lights.
4. I recommended that table topics participants speak from where they are sitting. Same for the Timer, Grammarian and Quizmaster when asked by the GE to give their reports. Evaluators on the other hand go to the lectern.
5. I interrupted the GE to ask him to explain his role. The speakers don't need another evaluation but the GE can add to an evaluator's evaluation if he feels that the evaluator missed something important.
6. If the Secretary is not present, he must ask someone else to take minutes. At my club, we just use the agenda to record times and guest names, and use it as our minutes.
7. Speakers should be introduced using the format Name - Title - Title - Name. For example,  J.K. Rowling - The Deathly Hallows - The Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling
8. Members who speak from where they are sitting turn the lectern back to the presiding officer by saying for example Mr. Topicsmaster.

The Quizmaster was kind enough to carry my lectern to my car for me as I had two bags. I spent some time with him and that got me thinking that maybe I should spend the last meeting going over whatever concerns the members may have. I sent an email to the VP Ed. to run it by his club's members.

Meeting of May 16, 2012

I did Project 5 Bringing History to Life from the Storytelling manual. Here are the objectives:

- To understand the purpose of stories about historical events or people.
- To use the storytelling skills developed in the preceding projects to tell a story about a historical event or person.

Time: 7 - 9 minutes

I talked about Malcolm X's transformation in prison. He was a hustler who was convicted of burglary and given fourteen counts of 8-10 years to be served concurrently. Normally, a conviction of burglary carries a sentence of two years for a first-time offender. Malcolm X's real crime was having a white female accomplice with whom he was having sexual relations. It turned out that prison was the best thing that ever happened to him because he discovered Islam -- submission to the will of God. He became a voracious reader and came to realize the extent to which black people in the Unites States had been brainwashed. They had had their names, languages, religion and culture taken away from them. They had been made to believe that Jesus was a blue-eyed blonde-haired white man even though he was Hebrew and that God also was white. He joined the prison debate team and excelled at public speaking.

I re-read a couple of chapters of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and re-watched the Spike Lee movie starring Denzel Washington (which was based on the book) to prepare for the speech. I wrote the opening and closing on separate sheets of paper but crammed the body onto one page. Big mistake. The body simply had way too much content for one page. I was in a hurry which is why this happened. I spoke for ten minutes but the club still enjoyed my speech.

I concluded my speech by relating my experience of growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the second half of the 1960s. The racial slurs that I endured and the countless racial microaggressions that were committed even when I was a young adult. See the article Nova Scotia: Mississippi of the North at http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1070-nova-scotia-mississippi-of-the-north and Mississippi of the North: Is This Label Deserved? at http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotiaBurning/7226319.html. I also mentioned how India was portrayed in the media: a third world nation with starving people. And people from there were made to appear unattractive, smelly and dirty. The last thing I mentioned is the way in which Hinduism was portrayed as a pagan or heathen religion with Christianity being the only path to God. How things have changed.

My son watched the movie with me because he wanted to know why Malcolm X is such a personal hero to me. Being born here in this ethnically diverse city, he can't relate to what I went through. I think the movie opened his eyes about how black people were brutalized for 400 years.

Anyway, the Storytelling manual is complete. Three more speeches left for the Advanced Communicator Gold.

Meeting of May 9, 2012

The Table Topics was something of a celebration of my contribution to the club because I'll be leaving at the end of June. I'll never forget what Gregory Smith said about going where you're celebrated not where you're tolerated. One of our other members also announced that he will attend only one more meeting. This is why it's so important for a Toastmasters club to be on the lookout for new members. The publication Membership Growth at http://www.toastmasters.org/1159_MembershipGrowth and the slide show at http://www.toastmasters.org/1311b_pps are worth reading.

My table topic was how does one go about acquiring knowledge and expertise? I mentioned my father who was a Fullbright Scholar and growing up in a home where there were books everywhere. I didn't become a reader until fairly late in my life. I mentioned a position I had in which I acquired expertise by reading everything I could on the product. I said it's the same with Toastmasters. Read everything you can that's published by this organization. And don't just read it once. Read it over as many times as you have to to make it a part of you. And even then don't be afraid to reread or review as is required. I took out my TI publication on chairing to illustrate my point.

I evaluated the first speaker. She signposted her speech which was appropriate in that it was a "how to". She used a saying in the opening and the closing. She gave us seven tips and I told her that she should have just given us three because three is something of a magic number in speaking. She didn't have the same structure for each tip and I told her that using the same structure will give the speech a rhythm that will make it easier to deliver and for the audience to hear. She had a tendency to bang her hands on the lectern. She spoke well and hardly referred to her notes. English is her second language.

I signed up to speak next week.

Club Name Change

The president of my club asked me what had to be done to let TI know that we had changed the name of the club. This paragraph is from an article in Toastmaster Magazine:  http://www.toastmasters.org/ToastmastersMagazine/ToastmasterArchive/2011/March/WhatsInaName.aspx 

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Play the Name Game To Win 
Take a good look at your club name. Does it still work? Many clubs retain names from former locations where they gathered, even though such sites are no longer representative of the neighborhood or city they meet in now. How confusing for all. Other clubs may be carrying outdated names reflective of their original focus. Is it time to update or tweak your club’s name? 

Some minor duties and expenses are required when altering a club name. First, such a change needs a two-thirds favorable vote of the active membership present and voting at the club meeting. A quorum of the active membership is required to conduct club business. After the favorable two-thirds vote of the active membership, a club officer must make the club-name change on the Toastmasters website at www.toastmasters.org. Simply log in to the Members page, then click on the Club Central link and find your club’s name and number. Then find the option titled Change My Club’s Bylaws and enter your club’s new name there. U.S. clubs also will need to report the name change to their local IRS office. The club can then opt to buy a new banner displaying the new name from the Toastmasters online store. 

If a new name brings in new members who are a good fit, isn’t it worth a little effort?  

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In addition to changing the name as described above, you have to change the URL of your club web site on the Update My Club Meeting Information page.

Presently our club web site is http://wolfedaleelectrictm.toastmastersclubs.org. I logged in as administrator and on the Club Website Settings page, changed the alias to "tangri" so the new club web site URL is tangri.toastmastersclubs.org.

I recommended buying a new banner which will have the new branding. TI is offering a 20% discount until December 31, 2012. 

Parliamentary Procedure in Action Session 5

I forgot that a club officer meeting was scheduled to begin half an hour prior to our regular meeting. There were some important items to be discussed so when I arrived, we decided to extend the club officer meeting another half hour. We ended up changing the name of the club and electing a president for the upcoming Toastmasters year. I served as Parliamentarian during the debate on the name change.

There was only enough time for my fifth and final presentation of Parliamentary Procedure in Action. It went over really well because I had prepared a good PowerPoint presentation. Our president announced that I would be leaving the club at the end of June and for the exercise, one of the members made a motion that I shouldn't be permitted to leave. Some humorous debate occurred, then another member put forward an amendment. We debated it and another member made a motion to postpone indefinitely which was carried.

I gave everyone their certificates. The meeting was well attended and everyone participated in the discussion. This is how a Toastmasters meeting should be! I really enjoyed both meetings and will miss the club but I have other work projects and interests to which I want to give 100% of my attention.

I now have four speeches to give for my Advanced Communicator Gold (ACG) and would like to give three of them at other clubs and the other one at my club by the end of June. I'll call around to see what clubs are looking for speakers. I spoke with the District 86 Speakers Bureau Chair about it. I told her I had material for all four speeches floating around in my head and asked if it is wise to be working on four speeches at one time. She said that if they are in your head, get them out onto paper or onto your computer before they evaporate. I should have talked to her a month ago!

Parliamentary Procedure in Action, Session 4

I came early to the meeting and set up my PC and projector. I had created a standalone PowerPoint presentation for Session 4 Incidental Motions of Parliamentary Procedure in Action. I used some of the slides that came with the module and did a quick review of the previous three sessions. I only covered five of the eight motions because the three I didn't cover were motions that aren't used much. With the exercise, I came in under 16 minutes! One of the members, a DTM and dual member, said that his club wants to be more formal in their use of Robert's Rules and said he found my presentation to be very useful.

The Chair was an inexperienced Toastmaster so I did a bit of coaching right from the beginning. I did the same for our new member who took on the roles of Grammarian and Quizmaster. The Chair said he feels more confident now and asked if he could try again at the next meeting. We said "Sure!"