Feb. 17th, 2015 Theme: International Speech And Evaluation Contests

All language is a popularity contest. ~~ Erin McKean

Welcome to our semi-annual club contest meeting blog. On this day, we were delighted to welcome 7 guests.  

Jean was our toastmaster for the contests. In addition to providing a special written agenda, she also provided contest-like scoring sheets with tear-off voting preferences for each contest. The scoring sheet contained the criteria and suggested point values to distinguish the best in each contest category.

The meeting was conducted like an area level set of contests to give the winning contestants the experience of rehearsing for the area level contests.

The (Ga)T(e) single member team was: Jim as Timer.           

Naser was our only contest speaker of the afternoon. He completed his speech entitled "Cooking With Love" in 9:00 minutes. Consequently, he will go on to participate in the area-level International Speech contest.

In his speech, Naser described the changes that started when he became a first time father-to-be. He had never cooked before and decided to make it a goal for his wife and himself. He connected Life with Cooking as it had the qualities of creativity, passion, strong intention and Love. He humorously described the plight of his wife being unwilling to eat healthily, so he managed to disguise the healthy ingredients by preparing over-powering tastes to cover the healthy ingredients and evading announcing specific ingredients of the various meals to her. He came equipped with Apron and Spatula.

Naser is planning a different speech for the Area level International Speech contest, which we will see and hear in the next two weeks.

Towards the end of the meeting, Jean conducted a round-robin audience evaluation of Naser’s speech.

Melissa B. was the target speaker for the evaluation contest. Melissa is a member of the Canyon Park Echoes Toastmaster Club and kindly consented to speak here to let the evaluators focus on a new and outside speaker. Her speech was entitled: "25 Cents In The Therapy Jar".

Her very humorous and anecdotal speech allowed us to share in the experiences and the coping mechanisms involved with learning to be an effective mother. She labeled herself as a “Tiger Copter” mom (!), and later a “Let’s keep it Real” mom. She was completely focused on her son’s proper upbringing, no matter how responsibility-averse he tried to be.

 Robert was the first evaluator (determined by guessing the closest number to Jean’s chosen number.  He praised her delivery and various speech characteristics and recommended that she actually bring in a therapy jar with enough quarters in it to make noise.

 

Linda was the second evaluator (who, while deliberately outside the room, did not hear Robert’s evaluation). She offered praise for Melissa’s speech, body language, eye contact, and use of humor. She had several recommendations including slowing down in her speaking somewhat and also suggested bringing in a Therapy Jar as a prop.

Linda was voted the winner of the Evaluation contest and both She and Naser will go on to participate in the Area-level Contests on March 25, 2015 in the Seattle Times Building at 6PM.

                                                 

Each contestant was interviewed while the ballots were counted

All contestants were given Participation Certificates and the winners will receive personalized trophies with their name engraved.

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Attendees were:  Lynne, Jean, Jim, Robert, Barb, Pauline, Alice, Jung, Grace, Amritha, Kimberley, Jessica, Naser, Linda along with guests: Diana W., Victoria W., Myrna R, Barbara R., David P., Anisha A. and Melissa B.  Anisha, one of our guests, joined our club today.  Our membership total is now at 23.

~~~~~ Respectfully Submitted by Robert, the Secretary [You’re invited to comment] ~~~~~