June 21st 2016 Theme – Do It Anyway

“I hear and forget; I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” ~~ Chinese Proverb

Welcome to our third meeting in June!

Amritha was the toastmaster of the day. Her GAT(e) team was comprised of the Grammarian - Jan (Proficient); Ah-Counter - Jessica; and Timer - Warren.

Nancy was the first speaker of the day, speaking from the Competent Communicator manual – Organize Your Speech. Title of her talk was “Core Values – Roadmaps to Creating Your Best Life!” which she completed within 7 minutes.

Nancy gripped us with an exciting introduction about sky diving, which led lead us into a discussion about how this definitely did not align with her core values! Her talk was very organized, going through multiple examples of how you can achieve happiness and success in life by sticking to your core values, and recognizing other people’s core values as well. She also provided the audience with helpful handouts and a brilliant PowerPoint presentation. By the end, we were all enlightened what core values are and how we can use them to create our best life. 

Nancy was voted the best speaker.

Evaluating Nancy’s speech was Barb.  She admittedly had a difficult time picking out critiques of Nancy’s speech because it was already so good! The two suggestions she managed to find, were to tie the introduction into the conclusion, as well as making the speech a bit more conversational. Overall, Barb was impressed with Nancy’s use of stories and props to get her point across. 

Randy was the second speaker of the day, performing his first speech from the Competent Communicator manual – Ice Breaker. Title of his talk was “What Will Be Left Behind?” which he completed in less than 6 minutes. You could hardly tell this was an Ice Breaker from the way Randy shared.

He started off with a gripping introduction and then asked us to reflect on what legacies our parents left us. In turn, the speech centered around what we will leave behind to our children. He took us through their childhoods and how he had sacrificed connection for responsibility. Ultimately he left us with a very important message: the value of being present.

Tobias evaluated Randy’s speech. He commented on how the content of the speech was important, but his delivery was what impacted everyone in the audience. Tobias could hardly find anything to critique about Randy’s speech, as he is already in the league of very great speakers. However, he did suggest more body movement, such as dancing, to add some excitement. For his emotional and humorous evaluation, Tobias was awarded the best evaluator!

Hadaya was the third speaker of the day, performing his speech #4 from the Competent Communicator manual – How to Say It. Title of his talk was “The Art of Communication” which he completed in 7 minutes.

By reflecting back onto his own experiences, Hadaya shared with us the setbacks he suffered as an immigrant in US due to lack of proper communication skills. He further gave us examples explaining how crucial communication is in relationships as well. He emphasized the fact that it’s not just the words that matter, the tone and pitch of our voice have a great impact in any conversation.

Lynne evaluated Hadaya’s speech. She admired his use of personal stories which added humor and brought the message across to audience. Having learnt about his cultural practices, Lynne gave kudos to his effort at overcoming the barrier of maintaining eye contact with audience. As suggestions, Lynne offered Hadaya to work on overcoming his filler words and possibly conclude the speech with a stronger conclusion.

In the Table Topics section led by Jean, she inspired us to think about our motivation behind our successes as a club and as individuals. In doing so, she gave us a very important example of what it means to be a leader and to share that experience so that others can learn. Participants included – Amritha, Barb, Warren, Jessica, Julie and Hadaya.

Jessica was awarded the best table topics speaker. 

Finally, Randy closed out the meeting with two humorous jokes!

There were 14 members in attendance, including Amritha, Barb, Hadaya, Jan, Jean, Jessica, Jim, Julie, Lynne, Nancy, Randy, Robert, Tobias, and Warren.

Respectfully Submitted by,

Amritha Imandi, Current Secretary and 

Jessica DiPietro, Incoming Secretary

Public Speaking Northwest #9406