Due to the annual convention for District 2 Toastmaster, today’s meeting is cancelled. See email sent by the Club President below.

May 4, 2020 at 12:22 PM

Hello Sunrisers! [Member Distribution List]

As a member of Toastmasters International, you have opportunities to participate in events and activities in the larger scope of the Toastmasters organization. Our local club is part of District 2, which serves much of western Washington. You can learn about what District 2 is up to at their website here: https://d2.toastmastersdistricts.org/
Every year, District 2 hosts an annual conference. It is typically a large in-person event, and it has a price attached for those who want to attend (typically around $100). This year, District 2 has decided to host the conference online instead of cancelling. Due to this change, they are offering the conference free of charge.A few of our officers are already registered for the event, and given this unprecedented opportunity, we would like to encourage all of you to register as well. The conference will be held on Saturday, May 16 2020 from 8am-2pm.
***PLEASE NOTE*** This is during our typical meeting time. We are cancelling our normal club meeting so that you will have the opportunity to attend the conference and learn more about how Toastmasters can impact your life.

The conference will include:

• Keynote Address by Deepak Menon, International President
• Keynote by Mark Brown, 1995 World Champion of Public Speaking
• Keynote by Yelena Balabanova, Accredited Speaker
• Virtual Awards Ceremonies
• Community Leadership Award – Kim Peterson, Uniquely Savvy
• District-level International Speech Contest
• Annual District Business Meeting (all members invited; required for specified officers)

Even if you are only able to attend part of the conference, the experience will help you understand more about Toastmasters International, and I’m sure it will motivate you to do more with your own professional and public speaking goals. 
In summary: Our meeting on Saturday, May 16th is cancelled. We encourage all of you to register for and attend the District 2 Annual Conference instead. Register here.

Lara Grauer
Club President

Jovica was the Toastmaster improvisor, without an agenda handout, introducing the theme of the meeting “Proper Question”, or in Jovica’s rephrasing, “Asking A Good Question”. We had two visitors, two second-time-speakers, six table topics participants, an impromptu general evaluator, with two evaluators and round robin volunteer evaluators.

Traci facilitated the table topics section using the theme of the meeting. Giving the instructions, she posed the proper questions: “What if you could make a perfect mother’s day celebration?” [Paula] “What would be your master mind retreat?” [Aleli] “What kind of animal would you like to meet and where?” [Jimmy] “What or where is your oasis?”[Judy]. Wrapping up the section and giving her insights and encouragement, Traci close the section and return the online speaker back to the Toastmaster.

The Toastmaster introduced the two speakers, who prepared a speech from one of the many Toastmaster manuals. Both new members, it was their second presentation at the Club. Young, as a data scientist, presented his UW research proposal on monitoring trajectory of a disaster and responses. Young outline his research proposal and possible outcome. Quoting the famous speaker Tony Robins, “Emotion is created by motion”, and giving a callout of visiting guest Judy from her table topic response, Young delivered a well developed and practiced speech. The second speaker was Hannah, a millennial professional woman, speaking of her quarter life crisis. Like an icebreaker speech, we learned more about Hannah’s goal oriented approach and her thoughtful reflection on what could happen, what did happen to her, when you achieve your goals in your Plan for Life.

Jovica called upon for an impromptu general evaluator, Aleli, to facilitate the evaluation section. Partner with the two evaluators Petar and Paula, along with the round-robin volunteers, the evaluation section highlighted their appreciation for the speakers preparedness and delivery. The round robin volunteers were Lara, Sari, Paula, Judy, Scott, and Jimmy. Some of phrases, from the robin robin, the suggested improvements where, “consider the hook”, “show it in a dramatic way”, “personal and powerful, and you could have expanded on the content”. Then the general evaluator, commented on the entire meeting, and closed the section with handoff to the Toastmaster.

President Lara warmly asked the two visitors, Sari and Judy, to share briefly on their meeting experience. We’re always so glad to have guests join us on our Saturday morning regular meeting.

Lara also had club business announcements at the end of the meeting, before the meeting adjourned. First, the committee for officer election has concluded their work and our next meeting will announce and induct the new set of officers. Second, the May 16th regular meeting is cancelled due to the majority of the officers attending the District 2 Toastmaster Convention Online. Thirdly, the officers committee will meet immediately after today’s regular meeting to discuss the club operations.

And the meeting was full of data, the math geeks woke up and took over our Toastmaster Meeting early Saturday morning. Starting with Young as Toastmaster of the Day, he introduced the theme, the roles, with calm assurance and confidence. Wait, is this his first time? Oh most excellent toastmaster….

And then there was Scott with his prepared speech full of statistics on charts, graphs, (AND)… he inserted a personal story of Covid preparedness for his grandparents. Oh Really, Scott! How could you be that geeky and touching at the same time. How do you balance the reality of death, the casualty of Covid19 pandemic with the very personal conscious anxiety over family safety. “I remember thinking in late January”, said Scott, as he started tracking the statistics. Daily analysis of the trends, to the monthly counts, to the projections to 1 million. Dark numbers.

Scott tracked critical data and trends locally and world wide. This is how he cope and protected his own. Emailing his grandparents of his analysis and recommendations, Scott shared his personal journey of realization of the seriousness of the virus, to tracking to fight, and preparing for the worst. Throughout the power point presentation, Scott used his voice, which was neither dramatic nor light hearted, and the prepared graphs to effectively communicate the reality of Covid19.

And then the end to the meetup came so fast. The President adjourn the members at 9:03, and announced that there was a special committee meeting after the regular meeting to continue the work for officer nominations.

The next regular club meeting is in two weeks, May 9th. Per the Officer Memo to the Club in March, we will continue to meet in our online Zoom meetings, as guided by District 2 Toastmaster Leadership. Hopefully everyone is getting more familiar and comfortable with this platform, as we expect to continue with the online meetings thru May and perhaps beyond.

The club is following the District 2 leadership guidelines for Covid19 response, officer elections, dues, training, conferences, and many other related club alignments. For additional information for D2TM, please check out their website: https://d2.toastmastersdistricts.org.

Volunteermatch.org, said Sam. First time toastmaster at SST Club, Sam introduced the theme as Volunteer Opportunities. Sam is an advance presenter and belongs to multiple TM Clubs. Although it was her first time as TM at this Club, she masterfully and smoothly ran the meeting with flow and transition.

As secretary of SST Club, Aleli presented an educational moment on the duties of the secretary, and asked the members to consider volunteering for the position starting in July. The Educational Moment section of the agenda is a space for a club officer to speak on a prepared topic, for educational or edification purposes.

One of the favorite part of any Toastmaster Club is the table topics section, where it gives members without an agenda role, and guests, the opportunity for impromptu speaking. Keeping with the theme of volunteerism and using the Word of the Day “Guinea Pig”, Bill gave a scenario and asked for volunteers. Isabella’s question was related to being a guinea pig for Covid 19 testing. Petar’s question was on dream volunteer job. Paula’s question, she punted and decided to answer Petar’s question of a dream volunteer job as a coach, traveling world wide to boost moral. I thought I heard her say chess coach and her bit of journalism writing. Jovica’s question was about unseen helpers. Lastly, Scott’s question was about a real-world quirky volunteer experience; and Scott shared about his over the boarder walking of the food.

We had only one prepared presenter for this zoom meeting. Jimmy used Power Point to share about Nancy, Jackie, Michelle, his chickens. With the Idaho family farm, Jimmy’s desire to raise his own chickens from his grandparents. From the first eggs, to what bullies chickens are, to his interaction with his grandparents, Jimmy had another well prepared and entertaining speech.

Scott was the GE, orchestrating the evaluation portion of the meeting. He first introduced Steven the speech evaluator. Steven not only gave us an evaluation, but a walking tour of house. There were the round robin evaluators of Isabella, Petar, Paula, and Aleli. Scott wrap-up the evaluation section with his overall observations. Pointing out virtual background usage, table toastmaster staying with the theme, congratulating Jimmy on a great job, and asking evaluators to consider using the sandwich-method, emphasizing the positives firstly.

Sam’s closed the main meeting and passed the closing to the President. VPE was absent at the meeting, and the agenda role for next week was skipped. The President made the closing comments that there is a new officer selection committee that will be contacting members in April and May. The intent is to have new elections at the end of May for new officers to serve July 2020 thru June 2021.