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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.