Karin von Kaenel was officially dubbed by the 2008-9 National Hobo Queen (and current Area A4 Governor) Carmine Coco DeYoung at the Area A4 speech contest on Wed. Sept.30th.
Karin also received a certificate (so she can hang something on the wall when she is out walking with the walking stick) !
EVALUATION CONTEST
First Place – Michael Cummings, Cartus Magnus
Second Place – Don Lococo, Socially Speaking
HUMOROUS CONTEST
First Place – Daniel Rapley, Wooster Heights
Second Place – Croix Sather, WestConn
Third Place – Belle Garafola, Barnum Square
Pictured below (l-r)...
Dan Rapley, Croix Sather, Belle Garafola, Michael Cummings
From left to right...Jim Sacco estimates that his son Josh has watched "Miracle," the film about the 1980 U.S. Olympic men's hockey team's legendary upset of the Soviets, nearly 150 times. Apparently, the movie has made quite an impression on the young fan. ...... No professional coaching. No fancy editing. No script, because Rizzo hasn't learned to read yet -- he was just 4 years old when his father filmed the speech earlier this year, making it all the more remarkable.
One of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, had a short but insightful blog post today titled, "If Craigslist cost $1" and since the deadline for submitting Toastmasters dues is Oct.1st, I thought it would be appropriate to share his key point ....Money creates a sort of friction. In the digital economy, magical things can happen when there is no friction. You can scale to infinity. On the other hand, sometimes you want friction.
If you lead a group that allows anyone to join, for free, your group might be large, but it's not tight, it's not organized to make important change. Commitment slows things down in the short run, but ultimately aligns interests.If your club still needs to submit dues, please do it today (or tomorrow). If you are using a credit or debit card, dues can be submitted by a club officer via www.Toastmasters.org. Just be sure to get them paid before the deadline of October 1st.
We have all seen it on TV... the interview on the courthouse steps with a million microphones all crammed in front of the attorney's face.Now, you just have to come up with some scenarios to serve up to your club members as TableTopics !Preparing your Message for the Interview
- Don’t talk to reporters without giving yourself time to prepare the message.
- Don’t dodge questions!
- Answer the question in eight seconds or less and bridge back to your main message for the next 25 seconds or so.
- If a reporter asks you a complex, detailed, five-part question, focus on answering the one question that leads you back to talking about your message points.
- When listening to a reporter’s question (and you must listen very carefully), don’t think about how your vast database of knowledge can provide 10,000 new facts to answer every nuance of the reporter’s question. Instead, focus on how you can honestly answer the question in a way that allows you to talk about one, two, or three of your message points.
- Remember, questions don’t matter. The subject matters.
Michelle Russell over at copyblogger.com wrote an interesting article about writing ... which could very easily be applied to your speech for the upcoming Humorous speech contest.... Write for yourself, edit for your readers ...1. Find the spine of your content and stick to it
2. Cut the first paragraph
3. Don’t over-spice your words
4. Watch out for “creep-in” words
5. Cut exaggerations
6. Find a more precise word
7. Reuse the leftovers
This Word of the Day comes from the Norwalk (CT) Toastmasters via their new Area Governor, Peggy Jean.— in·sou·ci·ant \in-ˈsü-sē-ənt, aⁿ-süs-yäⁿ\ adjective
— in·sou·ci·ant·ly \in-ˈsü-sē-ənt-lē\ adverb
Here are some of pictures from District 53's training session for Area and Division Governors in June 2009. (Did you know that Area Governors and Division Governors had their own training session?)
Thought the following true story was worth sharing and repeating. Hope this finds everyone well.There we were…..stuck with nowhere to go, nowhere to hide and all bored to tears. Myself, Tim, Don and Scott all sat trapped in a conference room at the Millennium Hotel in Downtown Chicago.
For the last couple of years I have been attending a series of Sales Forum's of sales leaders from different industries and companies and this was by far the worst. The speaker was the Sr. Vice President of Sales for a company that all of us had heard of but will go nameless in case one of you has a friend, relative or happens to know this gentleman.
So why were we bored to tears? Because he talked about the one subject that none of us cared about, spent money to hear or travel hundreds of miles to listen to. Although it was our least interesting subject obviously it was the speaker's favorite subject. The subject was himself!
I couldn't believe it and I can't exaggerate how bad this presentation was. He had a slide deck that was no less than 25 slides and the first 8 slides were dedicated to this man up to and including a picture of himself on vacation displaying his burly white legs and whiter bare feet as he smoked a hookah pipe on the roof of a Middle Eastern restaurant.
He spent so much time talking about his background and his supposed successful turnaround of four operating divisions that when he finally got to content that the sales leaders in the room cared about he had ran out of time and had to click through the slides in rapid fire succession. It was a classic mistake that many of us have made before; we sometimes speak so much about what we care about that we are oblivious to the cares of our customers.
We don't always spend the time talking about us personally but how many times have you given or been part of a presentation where we simply go into our song and dance about the features and benefits of a product only to find out nothing about the needs of our customer or what they care about? If you've ever started a presentation by asking no less than a half dozen questions about the objectives of your customer, than I can guarantee that you are guilty of this! Every meeting or presentation should be started with a number of questions before the meeting and during the start of the meeting to get a feel for what is one the mind of the customer and what their priorities are for your product or proposal.
Make sure that each and every account call is focused on the one thing that matters most to the customers…..the customer. Whether in the business of sales or in your everyday relationships if all your focus is on yourself you'll find yourself a very unsuccessful sales person and a very lonely individual.
Bill Miranda
The University of Bridgeport has a nice article on the "News & Events" section of their website about the involvement of their students with the Greater Bridgeport Toastmasters club (click here).
Dave Wheeler has discovered Twitter.com ... and is becoming an active "tweeter" !
