Opportunity

Well hello again to those of you reading!

This was our first meeting of the new Toastmasters year, and we are all excited to be back.

This year's executive is as follows:

President:  Greg Brown

VP Education: Dorothy Wilson

VP Membership: Jayashree Ramaswami

VP Public Relations: Norma Rodenburg

Treasurer: Shazin Mohamed

Secretary: Erik Niemonen

Sergeant@Arms: Julio Hernandez

This week's theme was 'Opportunity' , as the Toastmasters year is full of opportunities for personal development. Dorothy told us how to 'Know The Audience' in the educational session, Julio gave a speech entitled "Sweating Copper". It was a very entertaining story of home handyman adventures. Shazin gave a speech about cell phone etiquette, and Jayashree practiced her sales skills with a great presentation.

Our table topics session was another great success as Shazin had great questions. We were treated to a first ever table topic by our guest Deb, and she did a really good job! We could tell she had spoken in public before.

All in all a great way to start off the year.

The Next Step.

Taking the next step, however small it has to be for manageability, that's the key to moving forward. That's what Dorothy taught us with this week's theme. It will serve us well over the summer as the Powerspeakers are now breaking for the summer, the next meeting will be the first Wednesday of September.

On this day Irene also gave her Icebreaker speech, in which she took the novel approach of telling us about her future plans, rather than most other icebreaker speakers who tell us about their past. She has many natural speaking abilities and we know she'll go far.

Table Topics was supremely entertaining as usual, with Bik telling us about the intricacies of dancing buck naked, and Norma revealing that she infact wrote the book on procrastinating at work.

Here's to another great year Powerspeakers, see you in September!

Entertainment!

We laughed, we cried!

We were entertained!

Toastmaster Ann orchestrated a great meeting this week, with interesting introductions to start us off. Since our prepared speaker was unable to speak at the last moment, both Norma and Greg stepped up with impromptu speeches.

Greg told us what we could do to have fun this summer, and Norma gave us an account of her personal lesson in 'letting go', entertaining for sure!

As always table topics were awesome, everyone got a chance to speak. Until next week...

Survival

Survive and Thrive!

Ever wondered about the history of marriage? Well Julio answered all our questions and more with his fantastic speech!

We had great introductions with everyone telling stories of amazing survival against insane odds. We even had a story about a 5 year old Korean immigrant who would have been thrown overboard if it wasn't for his father's pleas. That boy is alive and thriving today as an adult! amazing, thanks Vy for that great story.

And good news, with the induction of our newest member Irene, and and the upcoming honorary induction of Dona Baker, we've hit charter strength. Woo hoo! 10 out of 10 DCP points here we come! Welcome to Irene, we'll have lots of fun and growth together.

Another inspiring and fun filled meeting, thanks everyone!

Strengths

Our meeting was all about what makes you feel strong.

Norma showed a video from Marcus Buckingham in which he shared the valuable insight that the traditional definition of a strength, something you're good at, is insufficient. Rather a strength is something that meets these three general criteria:

1. Something you yearn to do, something you look forward to.

2. Something you do that puts you in the zone, it takes no effort to concentrate, and time flies by.

3. Something that has a restorative feeling associated with it. When it's over you feel energized.

Norma suggested we focus less on what we're bad at, and more on our strengths, since that's where the most improvement will come from. She challenged us to find what each of our strengths in life are.


Julio gave a great speech entitled "Engineers Have Feelings Too!" Doctors and Lawyers have a shiny reputation, but when an Engineer states his occupation at a party, people run for the bathroom. Why is that? At the start of the 20th century engineers were treated like Gods, what happened!?

Our other speaker, Bik, told an entertaining tail of ill health when travelling, we've all been there!

Great job Powerspeakers, feel free to leave any comments you may have about the meeting. See you next week!

New Website.

The new website (www.powerspeakers.ca) is up and fully functional. As pictures (especially of the exec) start to trickle in I'll post them. For the time being, you can go there to download worksheets for your roles, and be sure to point any friends or acquaintances in that direction!