You are required to login to view this page.

While the official theme of Saturday’s meeting was “Exaggeration,” the theme that emerged throughout the morning was “Experience.” Each of the four speakers reached into their vast array of professional experiences to inform their speeches.

In her speech “You Can Make a Difference,” Andrea Shreni used her many years of experience as a Boeing engineer as she persuaded her audience to join her in helping to motivate young, Hispanic students to prepare for college.

Reaching into his years as a stand-up comedian, Andy Koopman’s “Techniques for Improving Memorization in Public Speaking” offered several shortcuts that could help Toastmasters to ditch their notes. Andy described the “Link” method, in which the speaker transforms paragraphs of text into interconnected mental graphics, and the “Memory Palace,” where the rooms of a house hold each of the speech’s paragraphs.

For Shane Baguyo, it was the experience of working in highly diverse public school settings that recently gave him the wisdom to leave his new job in an elite private school and return to his pedagogical roots. His speech offered several anecdotes from his private school that directly led him to that decision.

And in a follow-up to her previous “Down with Shame” speech, Marti Macewan reached into her years of sessions as a therapist to offer “Up with Empowerment,” a powerful presentation of how to achieve personal growth.

President Shen Yang presented the Best Table Topics Award to the meeting’s lone guest (whose picture I was able to capture, but whose name has somehow escaped my note-taking…sorry!!!), and the Best Evaluator Award to Michelle Delappe. (There is a rumor that Michelle has quite her job to sew a queen-sized quilt with all her ribbons.)

Without exaggeration, it was the best Seattle Sunrise meeting of October. But if our experience has taught us anything, we can be sure that next Saturday’s Speechathon will be even better. So be sure to grab your coffee to-go and join us.

With Rich J. at the helm as the Toastmaster of the Day, Seattle Sunrise members were treated to a few extraordinary moments this past Saturday.

Stepping outside of the typical speech format, Nicole C., with the help of her cotton friend “Eddie,” presented “Surprise and Delight,” a cruise-ship quality tutorial at Seattle Sunrise prices on how to fold bath towels into animal shapes.

If the collective oohs and ahhs and smiles in the room were any indication, hers was a lesson that we were each anxious to put to the test back home with our next round of house guests.

Thanks to some last-minute complications with another community group who shares our meeting venue, Seva Kumar was able to show off his improvisational skills in his speech, “Are You Detail-Oriented?” Without naming names, the community group in question failed to communicate their scheduling needs and forced Sunrise members to relocate to a cramped conference room, despite Seva’s ongoing efforts over recent weeks to coordinate venue-sharing with the group.

Undaunted by the resulting turmoil, Seva was able to draw on the morning events to illustrate the main point of his speech: namely, a plan – no matter how well organized – can only succeed with complete buy-in to the details and execution.

The third moment that stood outside the Saturday morning norm was Table Topics, led by Scott C. Rather than asking for individual responses to questions, Scott organized respondents into pairs, with one member simultaneously non-verbally “miming” their partner’s verbal response.

It was a formula that led to plenty of laughs, with members Jun-Lei and Andy K. walking away with the Best Table Topics ribbon for their depiction of surviving a bear attack.

Rounding out the speeches were Peter F’s inspirational “The Comfort of Risk” and “How Suburban Dandelions Challenged My Heuristics” by yours truly.

With the former, Peter recounted a brief moment in his life when he gave into his fears and vowed never to do that again. Peter cautioned us all to challenge our own fears head on and live out our dreams. With the latter, I discussed how neighborly lawn-maintenance advice led to my rethinking of various agricultural technologies.

Walking away with the Best Evaluator ribbon was Marti ME, for her evaluation of Nicole and Eddie’s towel folding presentation.

The meeting’s theme was “Moments of Truth,” and the truth of the matter is that Saturday brought us all another round of extraordinary Toastmaster moments. The next Seattle Sunrise Toastmaster meeting will be Saturday October 11. Please join us.

Five strong speeches helped to lower the curtain on summer for the Seattle Sunrise Toastmaster club this past Saturday during its monthly “Speechathon.”

Opening the meeting was one of the group’s newest members, Daniel Robins. Daniel used “Path to Self-Improvement,” his Icebreaker speech, to talk about his own, long journey to self-improvement. It was a journey that started in high school, passed through a near bout with the law, and continues to this day.

Marti MacEwan, addressing Toastmaster’s “Persuade with Power” project, took her seven minutes to convince club members and guests that they each had the power to change the trajectories of their lives. Her speech, which was titled “Down with Shame,” was informed by Marti’s many years of experience as a therapist.

Little did any of us know that for at least a few swashbuckling souls in the world, this past Friday was “Talk Like a Pirate Day.” To honor that date, Katey Noonan educated us all on a brief history of pirates with her “It’s a Tough Life Being a Pirate.”

Junlei Chen was joined by special guest Autumn Ta for her first Advanced Communication Project, “Conversing with Ease.” Junlei offered us four rules of how to engage in conversation with strangers, which were illustrated by an improvised on-stage conversation that she had with Autumn.

Hockey, with a cameo mention of hockey Hall-of-Famer Bobby Orr, was the subject of Brian Hudnall’s speech, “Rediscovering My Passion.” After his knees could no longer take the abuse that the sport threw at them during his high school years, Brian thought he had hung up his skates for the last time. But little did he know that years later, the simple act of getting back on the ice again would reignite his love for the game and remind him why he was so passionate about the sport growing up.

Scott Champion walked away with the “Best Evaluator” ribbon for his general evaluation of the meeting.

The next meeting for Seattle Sunrise Toastmasters will be on Saturday, September 27.

As always, our doors are wide open for the curious, so please join us for what always promises to be yet another enlightening and inspirational gathering of genial Toastmasters.