Getting Ready for Our Open House

We are getting ready for our Open House! Dusting, vacuuming, polishing the silver...

Actually, what we are doing is getting ready for you! We are making name tags and guest packets. We're preparing speeches and food. We're getting ready to show you what a Toastmasters meeting is all about.

Two of our members are going to give speeches, we'll play Table Topics, we'll evaluate ourselves on how well we did and then get ready to do it again next week. We'll leave plenty of room at the end of the meeting for questions and answers so you can ask away!

So, won't you please join us? We promise it will be a fun morning - and of course there will be coffee! At the break we will even serve a light breakfast. Bring a friend and see what Toastmasters is all about.

Four Speaking Lessons from "The Karate Kid"

Thursday, September 9, 2010

7:00am – 8:15am

6:45 am for Guest Packet, Coffee and Juice

A light breakfast will be served at the break

Highline Public Schools Building

15675 Ambaum Blvd SW, Burien

Across the street from Azteca, next to Hi-Line Lanes

South Classroom - Follow the signs!

Contact Theresa at burienbreakfast@gmail.com

www.burienbreakfast.blogspot.com

Using the Opportunities We Are Given

Theresa had the opportunity to be the acting president since Bang was out of town. She opened the meeting by welcoming our three guests: Tim, Norm and Randy and welcoming our newest member: Gerri!!

After the flag salute Jessica reminded us we have the opportunity to behave contrary to the way people expect with her thought of the day.

Jean Schmidt took her opportunity as Toastmaster to bedazzle us with her polished agenda including the times we should be starting each event. She wowed us as she single-hsndedly took on the roles of grammarian and timer, too. She led us through a meeting filled with opportunities to improve our speaking skills.

Jessica had the opportunity to tell us "The Best Kept Secret" and shared some of her recruiting stories with us. Theresa made us pretend we were business owners and she told us why we needed to jump on the social media bandwagon with "All A-Twitter."

Roger gave us the opportunity to find out what would happen if we were caught in sudden uncomfortable situations - how would we handle ourselves. Even a couple of our guests participated in this lively Table Topics session.

Our guest Tim won the best Table Topic award.

Roger won the best Evaluator award.

Jessica won the Best Speaker award.

Next week's schedule is posted here.

Jean's bedazzling agenda is posted here. All you need to do is copy and paste, then fill in the blanks.

Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest

Our Club’s Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest will be held at our next meeting - September 23rd.

The purpose of a speech contest is to provide an opportunity for speakers to improve their speaking abilities, to recognize individual Toastmasters as an encouragement to all, and to provide an opportunity for all Toastmasters to learn by observing speakers who have benefited from their Toastmasters training.

Each contest focuses on a particular set of skills, providing a terrific opportunity to learn about a specific area of communication. Many wonderful benefits accrue to those that participate.

• Contestants are afforded a wonderful opportunity to improve their skills in preparing and delivering a speech in a competitive environment

• Members not competing are provided the opportunity to learn by observing speakers who have benefited from their Toastmasters training

• The audience is provided an interesting educational program, entertainment, and FUN! This is a good time to invite guests.

• For the Fall Contests – everyone who is a member can participate! It doesn’t matter whether you have given 1 speech or 100.

Contests are held twice a year, once in the Fall and once in the Spring.

• Each of these contests begins with the Club Contest 9/9/10
• Club winners compete at the Area Contest (approximately 5-6 competitors) 10/15/10
• Area winners go on to the Division Contest (approximately 5-6 competitors) 10/22/10
• Division winners compete at the District Contest held in conjunction with the District Conference (seven competitors per contest in District 2) 11/13/10

The Table Topics Contest features a 1 to 2 minutes response to a question posed by the Contest chair. Contestants are taken from the room and each is brought into the room and given the same Table Topics question. No contestant hears the question or anyone's response prior to their turn on stage. They are judged on how well they respond.

The Humorous Speech is 5 to 7 minutes in length. Humorous speaking, which must be substantially original. Any quoted material must be identified during the presentation. The speech must be a thematic in nature (opening, body, and close) and not be an act or a monologue. It should be "clean" humor; avoid objectionable language, anecdotes, and material. Vocal variety, gestures, and speech content all play a part in a successful humorous speech.

In the Humorous Speech Contest the speeches are judged using a different set of categories, which include how well humor was used. Judges evaluate contestants with a rating system on a wide range of criteria. These rating scores are summed into a single score. The score is used to define a ranking of the top-three candidates. A count is used to determine the winner from the rankings. Each contest has a special tie-breaking judge, who ranks all candidates; this ranked list is used to break any ties in the contest..

Please plan to participate in our upcoming contest. If you have any questions, comments, and inquiries – please direct to Area 41’s Contest Chair – Sam Clemmens at sclemmens@earthlink.net.

Oh No! I'm the Toastmaster!

Being the Toastmaster is a big responsibility. It takes some planning and forethought. Here are 10 steps to being a great Toastmaster in Burien Breakfast Toastmasters:

1. Contact all of the members with roles and make sure they will be in attendance. If not, find their replacements now.

2. Connect with evaluators and speakers early in the week. Get introductions from speakers. Remind evaluators to connect with their speakers.

3. Send your introduction as Toastmaster to the President.

4. Arrive at the meeting early to distribute agendas and make sure all your players are in attendance. If you need someone to fill in, arrange that as quickly as possible before the start of the meeting.

5. Make sure to introduce the players for the meeting and have them explain their role.

6. Use the meeting guideline to keep the meeting on time.

7. After each speaker, ask members to write comments for the speaker and then remain silent for a minute to allow members to complete their notes.

8. After the last speaker, remind members to vote for best speaker.

9. After the last Table Topics, remind members to vote.

10. After the last evaluator, remind members to vote.

There you have it! Follow these guidelines and you will do just fine. Remember you can ask any of the officers for help, especially if this is your first time as Toastmaster (or second, or even third). We are here to help!

More Than Just Public Speaking!

Toastmasters Clubs are far more than just public speaking. They build confidence, communication and leadership skills, says Bruce Bulloch, a member of Toastmasters and the author of this great article about Toastmasters in the West Seattle Herald. You can see a Toastmasters club meeting in action by watching this video (clips of course!).

You can hear all about what makes Toastmasters a great organization by listening to this podcast by Bruce Bulloch.

But what if you don't live in West Seattle?

Burien Breakfast Club is the answer! Burien Breakfast Club meets the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month from 7am to 8:15 am at at 15675 Ambaum Blvd. S.W. Burien, WA 98166. We get you to work on time!

Come join us for a fun morning including coffee, light breakfast goodies, and an opportunity to meet new people striving to improving their communication and leadership skills just like you.

Summer Time!

After a bit of confusion we got down to our new meeting format:

1 Introduce the Toastmaster

2 Pledge and inspiration

3 Word of the day

4 Speeches

5 Joke and Food

6 Topic session

7 Evaluations

8 Business Meeting

It's summer time and Bang used that as her theme for the day's meeting. Commencement is the transition of what follows and also the word of the day brought to us by Roger. During hurricane Katrina Darlene volunteered by sending supplies to New Orleans and she related those experience at the club. Jean worked from an advanced manual presenting a program on how to use the Toastmaster program in reaching your goals. As our topic master Theresa had the club giving ideas for improving the club and bringing new people.

Next week's schedule is posted on our Schedules and Roles page.

Getting to Twenty

The Advice we got from Table Topics today on building our membership was outstanding! Here is a list of things we could get started on:

• Have a BBQ with a competition in storytelling, joke telling or bring in some politicians

• Put fliers up at the library, in your apartment complex, at the market, coffee shops, at work (We have a great flier - attached - print it out and spread the news!)

• Have a guest speaker with some controversy (like FDR impersonator - Does anyone know a local controversial celebrity or such)

• Think of 3 guests you could invite and why - Jessica chose Jay, he is an early riser and a businessman - a good combination for our club

• Thinking ahead to our club Humorous Speech contest - let's publicize it in the B-Town blog, in the Highline Times, let's play up FREE food (maybe have a special breakfast for the event), everyone bring a guest, special invitations to past members

• Some other things to try that Xandria brought up - Open House, doing another community event (Mercado Latino on Sunday afternoon anyone?), talking to local businesses