Capital City Toastmasters Meeting Recap - December 9, 2010

Submitted by Jillian Bowlin

Today's Theme: My Favorite Movie

Andrew Soloninka welcomed members and guests at 7 a.m., called the meeting to order and introduced Toastmaster David Kiker. David called upon each participant to share his/her favorite movie and sprinkled movie trivia throughout the morning. With the scheduled invocator absent, Mike Eaves stepped in and provided a very welcoming invocation. Dorsey Riddick followed with a series of humorous questions and answers. Tom Beaulieu took the role of wordmaster upon late notice and shared the word of the day, “Farouche.” Farouche means unsociable or shy or solitary. With everyone eagerly awaiting the prepared speeches, Abdel Salek explained the time parameters and explained his role as timekeeper.

Chris Crane gave the first speech of the morning, “The Dilemma.” This was Chris’ second speech from the competent communicator manual and he did a fantastic job describing his family’s experience camping and the tough decision of whether to sell his camper. Martin Rock then gave his speech, “Hubris vs. Exceptionalism.” Martin encouraged everyone to focus on education and live up to the standards we have proven possible in the past. Gwen Vass concluded the prepared speeches with “Be the Prize” as she recounted a speech she heard about providing more than just “the customer is always right” philosophy.

Charles Ibeziako challenged Jillian Bowlin and Tom Presley in Table Topics. Jillian had to convince Congress why a father should be given custody over a mother in the situation of a child born out of wedlock (talk about a challenging topic for a mother!). Tom had to convince his boss of why he should get a raise (and he gave this table topics speech in front of his boss).

Mike Eaves, Bob Crump and Wade Hudson evaluated each of the three speakers. Mike commented on Chris’ confidence and how uncommon it is to find in such an early speech in toastmasters. He gave feedback to make eye contact and move with purpose. Bob commended Martin on his great motivation speech and recommended he add a call to action at the end to give everyone something to remember it by. Wade spoke about Gwen’s ability to really get people to relate to the speech through the scenario she described and encouraged her to practice a strong conclusion to end with a bang.

Dean DiLillo served as Grammarian and said that he didn’t hear a single filler word in the meeting. Great job everyone! Tom Presley gave the General Evaluators report and commented on the club’s strength in stepping up when someone is absent and encouraging everyone to be willing to do so.

Winners were:

Best Table Topics: Jillian Bowlin
Best Evaluator: Wade Hudson
Best Speaker: Martin Rock

Seventeen people were in attendance, including one visitor, Huong Nguyen.