July 15, 2013 Club Meeting

The following is a summary of the minutes from our July 15th meeting.

Meeting Location:   The Hillsdale Mall, San Mateo, CA     6:00 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.

Attendees:

Present at the meeting were: Samya Boxberger-Oberoi, Suzanne Mulcahy, Sharon Pappos, Venkat Senapati, Jim Spath, Ruth Wadsworth, and Eric Yan.  There were three guests; Jill, Miles, and Wendell. 

Suzanne was the Toastmaster; Ruth was the General Evaluator; Suzanne was the Grammarian;  Samya was the Ah Counter;  Suzanne was the Vote Counter; and Ruth was the Timer.

Speaker #1:  Eric Yan:  “Hack Your Way to Success”

Manuel Project #3:  “Get to the Point” 

Eric began his speech by reminding us of his prior speech when he used the anachronism GAS, which stood for goals, authenticity, and start.  He gave us another anachronism, HACK, and proceeded to deliver his speech about the meaning of HACK.

·         (H) - Focus on our habits.  Goals can take a long time to complete, so it is important to form good habits to help us attain our goals.  After doing something for 21 days, it usually becomes a habit and therefore easier to do on a routine basis.

·         (A) – Accept that “Life is hard”.  Knowing this allows us to get through life’s everyday events, so we don’t get disappointed when the difficult things arise.

·         (CK) – Practice using “Kaizen”, which means continuous improvement to “close the gap”.  Become more and more like your ideal self.

Evaluation:    Sharon evaluated Eric’s speech.  She stated that Eric gave a very impressive speech.  He had a clear purpose from the beginning.  Eric began with “habits” and the benefits of creating habits to reach our goals.  Sharon stated that his speech was clear and well organized.  She remembered the line, “Be tenacious and you can HACK your way through anything.”  Sharon suggested that Eric could slow down during his transitions.  She further stated that he had excellent gestures, and voice enunciation, and did not use any notes. 

Speaker #2:  Jim  “Multi-tasking is Fun”

Manuel:  #2   “ Organize Your Speech”

Jim gave a speech about the pros and cons of multi-tasking.  He stated that he enjoyed this and was really good at it.  Some of the advantages of multi-tasking are:

·         Eliminates boredom.

·         Love the job variety.

·         Deal with many different people.

·         Gives you a variety of skills.

Jim talked about his occupation as a project manager.  No two days were the same and you are always learning a variety of skills.  Multi-tasking does, however, create some problems.

·         You can over commit.   You run out of time.

·         “Thrashing” – You can start one project, then another and finish none of them.

Jim concluded his speech by stating what we can avoid.

·         Don’t over commit.  Know when to say “no”.

·         Find your tolerance for multi-tasking.

·         Allocate time for specific projects.

·         “Time box things”.

Evaluation:  Samya evaluated Jim’s speech.  She really liked his points, advantages, and the ways we could get into trouble.  His speech was well organized, clear, and he defined it properly.  Jim used his visuals well and gave good examples. 

Samya suggested that he could put more pauses during his transitions.  His conclusion was very strong and she suggested that he could have made the introduction as strong and it would have been an even more powerful speech.

The theme of the meeting was: “Summer Holiday”; The word of the day was: “Leisure”.  Eric won the ribbon for the best table topics speaker.

    

Samya asked for the guests remarks and then closed the meeting. 

Meeting was adjourned at 7:15