Friday, September 14, 2007

September 13 - Minutes of the meeting

The meeting started at 7PM, and TM of the Evening was none other than BNT’s current Sgt. at Arms, TM Jun Roy. Jun is not new to public speaking, being a Trainer by profession. Currently he is the Training Manager of Pru Life UK, and it was easy to tell that he was in his element hosting the meeting.

Table Topics Master was BNT’s VP for membership, and current Area 16 governor, Gege Sugue. Gege is credited with quick thinking skills as she had to take over the job of being Table Topics Master, given less than an hour’s notice! But as expected, Gege did not disappoint. Not only did she come up with questions in line with the theme, but also came up with a creative way of choosing the table topics participants. In keeping with the theme, “Multiply”, Gege gave multiplication problems to the group. Whoever was the first to give the right answer, could “volunteer” anyone else in the group to answer the table topics question. Anyone giving the wrong answer was “punished”, and had to take on the table topics question him/herself! What a way to get everyone to stay on their toes! Each time Gege gave a multiplication problem, you could be sure everyone was heads down working on the solution! And they had to do it the long way, as calculators were not allowed. ;->

Table Topics participants were Boom, Alvin (who was "volunteered" by Boom), and first-time guests Champ and Cai. The Table Topics evaluation portion was ably handled by Club mentor, ATM-S Jazz Encarnacion. Jazz’s evaluations were on target, and she has set a standard that all BNT members would like to emulate. Her evaluations, as always, were comprehensive, direct to the point, and most importantly, she gave specific ideas on how the speakers can further improve on their delivery and organization.

Prepared speeches
Elinor delivered her Basic Speech #2 (Organize your speech) project, and the title was “Powers of Leadership”. Her speech focused and compared different leaders. Her talk was organized like an inverted pyramid, as pointed out by her evaluator Gege Sugue, wherein she opened her speech with global or world leaders, then went to local leaders till finally she focused on BNT and it’s leaders. She ended her talk with a call to action, and that is to join BNT! How’s that for our future VP for membership?

Gege’s evaluation of Elinor’s speech was very detailed, and the teacher in Gege came through, as she ended her evaluation of Elinor’s speech with a letter grade, an A+! :)

Next speaker was Alvin Tan, ACB, whose speech was entitled “Up and Down”. And what was it about? It was about Alvin’s foray into the athletic world, with his participation in the Philippines first-ever “vertical marathon”! Yup, he together with hundreds of other runners participated and ran up 21 flights of stairs, and down again. It was a truly entertaining speech from BNT’s very own, Alvin the Animated. Alvin’s speech was evaluated by BNT President, Ed Ebreo, who pointed out that the choice of topic and Alvin’s delivery was indeed entertaining, and how Alvin has again successfully met the objectives of his speech project.

Last speaker for the evening was Sheila dela Cruz, CC, CL, who delivered an educational speech from the Successful Club Series. Her speech was on “Finding New Members for your Club”, and explained as well the different recognition programs of Toastmasters International for sponsoring new members into TM.

One such recognition program is the Smedley award. It is an award presented to clubs that add at least five (5) new members between August 1 and September 30. And what do we get if we add five (5) new/dual/reinstalled members? Our club receives a nice new ribbon to add on to our growing number of ribbon awards. This is a great affirmation that we are realizing our vision of being a preferred Toastmasters club. :)

To get everyone even more encouraged, we tied up our club’s Express Express program, and are giving double rewards this month (September) for:

Ø inviting first time guest- original point value is 5 points; for this month only it will be 10 points Ø signing up new/dual/reinstalled members - original value is 10 points; for this period before Sept. 28 only it will be 20 points
Ø PLUS the new/dual/ reinstalled member him/herself will receive 20 points just by joining. This will put him/her in the running for the individual point race and will also add to the team points.

General Evaluator for the evening was BNT President Ed Ebreo (ACB), and his team of technical evaluators included Tisha, Alvin and Mars.

Language Evaluator was TM Tisha Timbang, and Tisha’s evaluation focused on three types of “germs” (incorrect use of tenses, nouns, and choice of words specifically redundancies she noted). As for the Gems, they were as usual, plentiful in the club, which tested Tisha’s listening skills.

Ah counter was Alvin Sy, ACB, who also did a “haha count”. What’s a “haha” count? The counter will count each “haha” (or laughter) that a speaker gets while delivering his/her speech. It was suggested in our past meeting by one of our guest evaluators, ATM-B Eduardo “Ed” Fabonan, who took note of the fun and easy banter between members, and which he felt would fit into the club’s happy and wacky culture. Alvin was quick to incorporate this suggestion into our regular club meeting, and even came up with his own criteria before counting a “haha” and that there should be at least 4 people laughing for it to count as a HAHA! Hahahahahaha!!! :)

Timekeeper was TM Marlito Sy, who kept an eagle eye on the clock and who pointed out the evaluators and speakers who went overtime in their speeches. And this is clearly something the evaluators still need to improve on. This calls to mind a suggestion in the past, to also penalize the speakers who went overtime, but of course, to limit the payment of fines to BNT club members. This would not only help discipline our members, but add to the club’s coffers as well.

We had a total of 14 guests last night. Hooray, hooray! That translated to loads of points for the members who invited them! :)
Jane Cayaban – Tisha (Team 1)
Kristian Ray Lim – Elinor (Team 1)
Marvin Dy – Elinor (Team 1)
Jayson Jacinto – Elinor (Team 1)
Ray-An Salvador – Elinor (Team 1)
Maricar Ocampo – Sheila (Team 2)
Angelica Nicdao – Sheila (Team 2)
Rose Anne Flores – Sheila (Team 2)
Champ Castillo – Gege (Team 2)
Rita Aguas – Gege (Team 2)
Bart Aguas – Gege (Team 2)
Tak Campos – Jun (Team 3)
Joey Valencia – walk-in
Jess Esmero – walk-in

As for EXPRESS EXPRESS, the points garnered for this meeting are as follows:

Team 1
Attendance: 4 members x 5 pts. = 20 points
1 speaker (Elinor) = 10 points
5 first-time guests x 10 pts. = 50 points
----------------
80 points
===========


Team 2
Attendance: 3 members x 5 pts. = 15 points
1 speaker (Sheila) = 10 points
6 first-time guests x 10 pts. = 60 points
-----------------
85 points
============

Team 3
Attendance: 3 members x 5 pts. = 15 points
1 speaker (Alvin) = 10 points
1 first-time guests x 10 pts. = 10 points
-----------------
35 points
============

Current Team standings (after 3 meetings):
Team 1 – 145 points
Team 2 – 205 points
Team 3 – 100 points

Team 2 is leading! Teams 1 and 3 are not that far behind, and may still overtake Team 2. The competition is heating up…

As always, BNT’s club meeting was fun and exciting! It’s a great venue to further improve one’s communication and leadership skills. We hope to see all BNT’s club members, and more and MORE guests next meeting, 27 September 2007!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"signing up new/dual/reinstalled members"

Signing up dual members should not to be encouraged as a matter of policy. Some clubs use such approach to pirate members from other clubs and it is best to avoid trouble and possibly losing respect.

Anonymous said...

hi,

Is this club still active? can you email me your current meeting schedules and who i may contact?

joyful_abundance@yahoo.com

Thanks,

Jan

gege said...

re: comment on dual memberhip

hello anonymous ;) Thanks for visiting our blog and for leaving a comment.

We do have some members who are also active members, and even officers, of other clubs. Some dual members are seasoned Toastmasters who are mentoring our club. And one dual member is a member of his corporate club as well as ours. All have decided to be dual members voluntarily. We don't poach from other clubs. Nor do we lure guests of other clubs to visit ours. So far, we have not had a problem with this matter.

gege said...

Hi Jan.

Thank you for visiting our blog. I will be emailing you some information shortly.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails