Is it shocking that a millennial Toastmaster schooled the rest of us on 70s Rock Music? With his tenor voice, Jimmy started his introductions with data from the Billboard Music, merging the statistics with commentary highlights on the inequality of representation of black artist and women. Who is Sister Rosetta Tharpe and where is her tombstone? Then another shock to wake us up in the early morning meeting, Traci, as the grammarian gave us the word of the day, “Bitchen” and “Skinny”, which were throw-backs to 70s vernaculars. That’s how the meeting started, with shock and laughter.

Paula led as the Table Topics Master and provided a lighter side of the meeting. Answering impromptu questions, Jovica, Judy, and Steven quip on gossip, favorite snack, and walking on the wild side.

We had two speakers, Jovica and Young, who prepared their speeches on two different topics. Jovica finishing his 5th project assignment in the Technical Presentations advance manual, gave a technical talk on the platform Canvas, an online collegiate platform for remote classes period of our days. Young gave his speech on Pathways Presentation Master Level 1 with a titled, “If you had 10 million dollars”. Each of our presenters experimented on their delivery and experienced the reward of growth. It is interesting to calibrate and adapt to presenting projects in-person versus in a remote Zoom platform.

The evaluation section was at the end of the meeting. Aleli evaluated Jovica against his project 5 assignment objectives. Bill evaluated Young on his project delivery. Steven evaluated the general meeting thoroughly and encouraged all members to come early and not late to the regular meetings.

The meeting started at 8:01 AM and ended at 9:15AM. Paula, the meeting presider ended with words of encouragement and reminder to members that the Zoom bridge will be changing starting next meeting, and the outgoing officers will end their term at the end of the month.

Scott provided theme of the meeting, as the presider and president introduced him as the Toastmaster of the Day. With his calm voice, Scott introduced the theme, and the other meeting roles, the Timer Isabella and Grammarian Paula. Petar was the table topics master. Jovica was the General evaluator who facilitated the last section of the meeting.

Aleli provided an impromptu pocket speech, not aligned to a particular education manual for 8:07. She shared her personal letter to her dad and had call to action for the members to call their love ones today. Bill spoke for 7:41 on Born Again, from the Project #4 Competent Communicator legacy manual, on the topic of equity and his changed views.

The evaluation section is one of most treasured sections of the Toastmaster meeting. It’s a section that is not prepared and demands the evaluator to improve in active listening, critical thinking, and delivering positive and useful feedback. They say it’s the heart of the toastmaster education program, the evaluations, as you observe the speeches and offer evaluations for your requested areas. Jovica introduced this section and the chosen evaluators, Young and Steven. Young provided his evaluation of Aleli’s letter-reading icebreaker. Steven provided his evaluation of Bill’s presentation, commenting that the gestures did not match the tone of the serious of the speech overall. For example, Bill started his speech with large gestures of falling over the side of his chair, but his speech was very serious with the sub-theme of the Black Lives Matter. Steven commented that when gestures and content are incongruent, it’s makes the audience feel uncomfortable.

The Toastmaster of the Day requested that club go back to its traditional practice of voting on the best table topics speaker and best evaluator. We took a virtual vote within the Zoom platform chat window. It was a tie for the table topics best speaker between Traci, Lara, and Judy. The best evaluator was awarded to Steven Ward.

Starting at 08:05 AM, with the help of Paula’s shared screen, the agenda was was viewable on the Zoom screen as the meeting started. While there was a dark overcast, with ominous clouds and quiet thunder weather conditions, inside the warmth of our own homes, we stayed dry from the rain, as we joined the regular meeting via Zoom VTC. Bill was the toastmaster of the day and he introduced the theme of the day, “Compassionate Fatigue Remedies”.

Lara facilitated the table topics with questions for volunteers. “If you could be anything in the world, who would you be? [Petar]. “What brought you joy in your younger years?” [Young]. “Who is your favorite super hero and why?” [Paula]. Due to late start we had only 3 volunteers for the extemporaneous speeches, and Bill quickly ushered the audience to the next section for prepared speeches.

We had two speakers, who spoke with passioned and clear messages. Steven shared with the the TM club that he is humbly thinking of idea for social media, as he accepted the election to be the new VP Public Relations for the Club. Steven shared his vision “laziness” for social media and yet he plans to be more active and ask the Club to also be more active in using tools to promote the Club, increase PR and using the FB platform in a new way. Steven asked for feedback for his ideas either today or email him directly. Traci spoke about “Courage Over Comfort” via her lessons from the book Building a Story Brand, hitting some key points from the book and providing a handout via email.

Paula facilitated the Evaluation sections, and introduced the main evaluators. Sam provided feedback to Steven on his overall presentation, commenting on the content and delivery. She suggested considering having less gestures in Zoom forum in comparison to in-person presentation. Scott evaluated Traci’s presentation, congratulating her on the completion of Classic Manual “Competent Communicator” and starting her first advance presentation. Scott suggested improvements in the area of revising the opening and clarifying on speech content. One stretch goal, Scott suggested for Traci, is to find a balance of prepared versus improvisational, experimenting where that level is where you start to see the comfort-zone and go beyond, to orient the speech to be both prepared and natural. There were three or four volunteers for the round robin evaluation, which either Samantha or Scott solicited from the audience. Paula wrap up the evaluation section with thanking the evaluators and reminding the audience of the “sandwich” method. Due to agenda delays, Paula quickly transitioned the meeting back to the toastmaster.

We had seventeen (17) people attend the zoom meeting on this overcast raining day. There were 3 guests: Vivi, Milton, and Jeff. It’s the end of May with one month left before the change of the officer-committee for the next fiscal year. Please remember, that our Club does not meet on the 1st Saturday of the month. The next meeting will be Saturday June 13, 2020 on the same Zoom bridge.

It was a bright Saturday morning for our Toastmaster regular meeting. We started late due to agenda-difficulties, and ended the meeting 20 minutes later than usual, due to the Club officer election and voting period.

Members have different reasons to join a particular club. We were thrilled to hear that Judy decided to join, after her initial visit at our last meeting. We had one visitor Vivi, who wanted to observe our session.

Steven, as the toastmaster of the day had to truncate or shorten the meeting content, the time ranges of speakers, due to officer elections. He introduced the theme “Internal Audit”, and the Young, our grammarian, introduced the word of the day “Introspection”. Paula was the timer, provided the role’s objective and timing windows.

Scott facilitated a technical and realistic Table Topics. Staying within the theme, Scott provided scenario based questions. Setting up the stage of, “all the management of the IRS has been removed, fired, and there is a new set of management and policies. The new elected head of IRS is called to Congress to speak; he setup a committee to help him answer the questions on the Hill. Scott gave the setup and instructions, which was to prepare him on the questioning by Congress. Each table topic volunteer had a question topic. They needed answer extemporaneously, giving data and support material to Scott to help him prepare. “The IRS laws are updated/amended to deal with the Covid19 pandemic, what are those changes?” [Jovica]. “What will be the revenue expected during this year in light of Covid19?” [Hannah]. “What is the impact to the business and how do we deal with larger corporation taking advantage for the stimulus? [Bill] ” If you were the president, what would you recommend for the IRS tase, disclosures, etc”? [Judy] “What key trends have you discovered this year?” [Young]. Heavy and technical table topics, it surely made us all feel like we were at work, when asked to answer impromptu to some hard questions.

We had two speakers Petar and guest speaker Brian. Petar spoke on the “Bond Between Grandparents and Grandchildren”. Brian spoke on “Justice Must Be Served: Exposing the Conspiracy Against Michael Flynn”. Sam evaluated Petar speech, highlighting Petar content organization, like the old-fashion way to use prompt of holding up is grandparents photo, for the great eye contact. Some suggestion were conveyed on looking more comfortable and less stiff during presentation by taking more breaths and letting the body language be more loose. Sam also suggested a little more vocal variety, in addition to the good volume that Petar had exhibited. Lara was the second evaluator. Praising the interactive advance speech by Brian, Lara pointed out the many good content and delivery, including commenting on his suit and tie attire. The speech was technical and was setup to be a contentious or confrontational Q&A with a hostile audience; but the audience so early in the morning, was not hostile to the Presidential Press Secretary and his Michael Flynn defense. We were so glad to have Brian be our guest speaker and have him present an advance project.

The general evaluator provided a shorten version of her section or critique. Instead of facilitating the entire Evaluation Section, the agenda was slightly different then the Zoom agenda that’s been applied since March. Traci commented on than 25% GE orchestration, was now 7% for just the GE, a shorten evaluation at that at just 2 minutes. She suggested that the Club should have Zoom tips and FAQs to assist on common understanding and best practices. Traci ended her evaluation that the Toastmaster should send out the agenda earlier in the week and not the day off.

The Toastmaster handed back the meeting at 8:57 to the President who then started the motion for new officers election. We’re transitioning into a new term beginning on July 1, which means our officers will be changing.  We have a proposed list of officers (verbally naming the position and candidates). Today, the Club will vote for the nominees.

Proposed Officers / Voted New Officers based on Votes during meeting.

Club President – Paula
Vice President Education  – Jovica
Vice President Membership – Young
Vice President Public Relations –  Steven
Club Secretary – (none / tbd)
Club Treasurer – Scott
Sergeant at Arms – (none / tbd)
Immediate Past Club President – Lara

Lara as President set the motion to vote. Aleli as Secretary, seconded the motion on the selected Officers. Lara asked for the quorum—a majority of the active members—is needed to conduct club business, including electing officers, to confirm elections of the new officers. Any concerns, comments can be either vocally said during the business meeting or typed on the Zoom comments. To fill in the empty roles, Lara asked if anyone was interested to serve as Secretary or Sergeant at Arms. Steven, Paula, Bill directly nominated specific individuals on the meeting; and there was no responses. Due to the missing position, the President and incoming President will followup on those positions to fill offline.

The business meeting ended at 9:20 and the members hung-around socializing until 9:37, including visiting guest Vivi and guest speaker Brian.