08/23/05 Geospeakers Meeting Summary

Chris, our illustrious President, rocked our meeting to order at 11:49 by my watch (runs fast), with a cheerful welcome to all. Our Area C2 governor Queen-Mein Foo was on her official visit to our club today.

Club business: officer training tonight (8/23/05) at Allstate (Carol and one other needs to go in order to fulfill our TM duty as officers, as well as fulfill one of our Distinguished Club goals.) Also, the next Area contest will be held here at the USGS on Friday, Sept. 23rd. All are encouraged to contest, attend and be merry.

After Carol introduced the evaluation team, we went on to our speech portion of the meeting. Sharon gave an awesome Icebreaker "Shouldn't I Know This?", warming our hearts and filling us in on her island of birth, number of siblings, as well as extended family (including lots of cousins), and of course, a description of her husband and dog (and I'm not sure but I'm almost positive she described her dog as big, black, and sexy). Well done for any speech, let alone your first speech! Also, best wishes and thanks for sharing your exciting news; she's expecting!

Next on the agenda: Gretchen gave an excellent 'Better Speaker Series' speech on 'Impromptu Speaking'. In her speech, she encouraged us to listen, pause, confirm, tell, then end. She also discussed strategies to discuss, such as expressing an opinion, or cause and effect, or topics components, and lastly, past, present or future. She summed it up well by encouraging us to utilize these strategies as we transitioned into Table Topics.

Our topic today was Toastmaster Contests, and our fond memories of them, be we participants, hosts, contestants, organizer, or jobholder. Many of us have done many things, but Fran was Most Humorous in her humorously green outfit befitting a contest near St. Patrick's Day; Neil Most Eloquent for his fond memory of organizing one of the best-attended Area (and District) contest probably ever while serving as Area C-2 governor; and Imelda and Ann tied for Most Interesting. Imelda described how she is convinced and will convince friends to attend the next contest, and Ann, ready to don the costumes, play music, and deck the halls for our next grand but not grandiloquent event.

As our Wordmaster pointed out, "grandiloquent" is not a compliment), but we almost all enjoyed using it anyway. Just an aside: at our officer's meeting that followed, we decided the theme for this contest should be Aloha Friday, so don those Hawaiian shirts, and we'll provide the leis.

We then had wonderful evaluations of our prepared speeches, using some of the strategies given today on impromptu speaking. Cynthia was 'right on' in her evaluation, for which she was taking notes even before Sharon took the stage with her charismatic personality. Sharon definitely gets a 2 thumbs up from all of us. Next, Shane followed quite wittily with a serious yet humorous evaluation of Gretchen's speech. How he can always keep us in stitches is beyond me.

OK, just as the meeting ran a few minutes late, so did I. As Gretchen said, when you're done, just end it, but I must mention also that our young visitor Daria was so moved by our speeches and meetings she has recently attended, that she asked to present her thoughts to us at the end of the meeting, in a brief prepared speech! Way to go Future Toastmaster!

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