Ivan Stoyanov opened the meeting discussing humans’ search for meaning by referencing Victor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”.  John Wendtland then highlighted the far-reaching implications of the US’s geographic advantages.  Finally, Jeff McRaven narrated the life of a famous American, framing the essence of his character with a letter he had written.

Sheila Wilkinson conducted interviews with several members in talk show format.

The entire meeting was conducted with a radio show theme.  A large screen was used to separate the speakers from the audience.  This enabled the speakers and the audience to focus on the vocal aspects of speaking.

 

Paul Langford led the evening with, “The Most Fascinating Place on Earth to Vacation”.

Alicia Saddoris then discussed different types of health and well-being.

Finally, Julie Court presented on leadership role models in the past and in the present in “To Be Or Not To Be”.

https://www.facebook.com/Chippewa-Valley-Toastmasters-1908715156024253/

We planned a meeting that was not our normal 3-speeches-3-evaluations-and-table-topics night.  Instead we had a hands-on learning session about Judging combined with a humorous speech by Alicia Saddoris.

First, Alicia gave her humorous speech entitled, “Undomesticated Humans”.  We look forward to her competing in the Toastmasters’ W3 Area Humorous Speech competition in September.

Then Jeff McRaven gave a speech entitled, “The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Said”.

It was a well-honed humorous speech that Jeff had given many times in the past.  Heidi Schreiner lead a practice judging session with the group.  Jeff’s speech was difficult to judge.  It was supposed to be…

Then Heidi gave a speech entitled, “The Value of Shame”.  Jeff used the speech to lead a second practice judging session with the group.

We were given handouts of the official judging sheets used in Toastmaster speech competitions as judging aids.  On the sheets all elements of good public speaking are weighted by relative importance.  Exposure to both the process of judging a speech and the system used to judge speeches helps members better develop their own public speaking skills.

 

We are pleased to announce our move to a new meeting site at Mayo Clinic Health Systems–Luther Hospital, 1221 Whipple St., Eau Claire, WI 54703.

We would also like to extend our thanks to everyone at the Goodwill store in Chippewa Falls who made it possible for us to use their conference room these past months.

Many of us like to socialize a bit before and after meetings.

Alicia Saddoris was our Toastmaster for the evening.  The Toastmaster is responsible for running the first half of our meeting.

The Grammarian for the evening was Jeff McRaven.  The Grammarian introduces the word of the day and pays attention to language usage in speeches.

Ben was Timer.  The Timer times speeches and gives the speaker a visual cue when they reach the low, middle, and high end of their allotted speaking time.

Steve Daigle, visiting toastmaster from the NSP Xcellence toastmaster group gave a speech entitled ” Business Man”.

Jeff McRaven gave a speech entitled “Evaluations”.

Heidi was our Table Topics Master for the evening. The Table Topics Master prepares several topics in advance and requests volunteers to take one of the topics.  Since the speaker has no idea what the table topic is, this is a great opportunity for learning to speak “off-the-cuff”.   We try hard, but don’t take ourselves too seriously.  So, it makes for lots of laughs.

Alicia Saddoris first spoke about “Why I painted my house with blue and white stripes”.

Tim Haukeness addressed the question, “What would you do if you had a truckload of number 2 pencils?”.  How he managed to work his way through that one we will never know.

Typically we spend quite a bit of time on impromptu speaking, but had additional club activities added to the schedule.  Table Topics helps ensure that all members have at least one opportunity to speak at each meeting.