May 4, 2015 Club Meeting

Chamber Speakers Circle Toastmasters

May 4, 2015

Attendees: Annamarie, Lara, Joe, Randy Lee Samya, Chris, Trey, Sergio

Guests:  Pieter, Marika, Jorge

Theme of the day: Music

Word of the day:  discordant

Samya reminded everyone about the upcoming district conference on May 16^th.  Trey is unable to attend.  Samya mentioned Aditi and Annamarie would attend the District conference.  Samya indicated she would send out an email with more information and ask for confirmation.  District conference is in Santa Clara on May 16^th.

Lara was the Toastmaster, Joe led Table Topics, Marika was the General Evaluator, Randy was the Grammarian and the Timer, Sergio was the Ah Counter, Jorge was the Vote Counter

Speaker:  Trey

Speech: Immigration Process Project #5 Your Body Speaks

Trey fired up the projector to use with his presentation.  Trey spoke about his work as an HR Specialist and shared basics about the immigration process that he regularly deals with.  He compared immigrants and non-immigrants.  Trey reviewed the different statuses: visitor, student, job transfer and special skills. 

Trey distinguished that visitors who receive ten year visas still need to go in and out of the country every six months.  Company-sponsored immigration are the ones Trey works with most often.  Employees must have a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in the field.  Permanent Residency is the main objective most people have.

Speaker:  Pieter

Speech: Another Viewpoint  Project #10 Inspire your audience

Pieter began his speech by describing a course he taught with Marika.  Pieter indicated he would be quoting Harry Palmer.  He asked the audience “What, aside from money, gives them the most difficulty in life?”.  Pieter made a list from audience responses that included: Co-workers, time management, health and excessive busy-ness.  

Pieter said the course he teaches takes only nine days and would address the aforementioned issues, it was about living deliberately.  He first took the course in 1999.  Pieter learned how to use the tools and began to apply them.  A month prior to beginning the course, at least six families approached him angrily, calling Pieter arrogant.  He took the course, not focusing on anger or arrogance and returned to his practice.  Pieter’s staff remarked that the patients were noticing how kind Pieter is now.

Pieter then addressed the issue of physical health and spoke about his own experience with feeling pain a year earlier.  He took a course in the desert, and on the return journey, he felt an impending heart attack and decided to use one of the tools he had learned called “The attack handle”.  Two minutes later, he felt better and landed in Albuquerque.  He saw his doctor and took tests for his heart.  Pieter did another process for the following six weeks and then visited his cardiologist who let him know his vessels had cleared.  

Five years later, Pieter had another procedure, and he hadn’t done any more work on his vessels, but they were still clean.  He then passed out a pamphlet with exercises to the members of the audience and led them in the first exercise.

Pieter suggests that people buy the set of books by Harry Palmer.

Table Topics:  Joe led Table Topics with post-its on the wall with topics on music.  Samya, Marika, Jorge, Lara and Annamarie, Randy Lee and Sergio participated in Table Topics.

Marika called on her team of evaluators.

Evaluator #1:  Annamarie on Trey’s speech

Annamarie liked how informative Trey’s presentation was, the visuals were very good and he used concise terms for explanations.  He cleared up misnomers.  Trey had enthusiasm and a positive clear manner with natural gestures and clear eye contact.  Annamarie indicated Trey could be more forceful with gestures which was difficult due to using the remote.  A bit more vocal variety would help as well.   Overall it was a great subject and compelled Annamarie to find out more.

Evaluator #2: Samya on Pieter’s speech

Samya noted how inspiring Pieter was, how he began with a question and engaged the audience.  He asked for feedback and was listening for the answers.  Pieter addressed everyone’s responses in his speech.  He gave good and vivid examples in his speech.  Samya indicated Pieter could relate his vivid stories to the answers from the audience.  She thought the story of a heart attack was very vivid.  Samya indicated that he could have linked some of the stories and answers.  She mentioned that Pieter should not apologize for going over time as it broke the focus.  Samya noted the change in voice when Pieter spoke as the doctor.  Samya suggested re-ordering the speech to be a fantastic speech.

Annamarie won the Table Topics contest

Samya reminded people to applaud and to be aware of the agenda and their roles.

The meeting ended late at 7:39

 Roles for meeting 5/11/15:

Toastmaster: Randy Lee Theme:   

General Evaluator:   Aditi

Speaker 1:  Annamarie project #?

Evaluator 1:  Trey

Speaker 2:  Sergio Project #1 icebreaker

Evaluator #2:   Lara

Table Topics:  Samya

Grammarian: OPEN   Word of the day: _______

Timer: Joe

Ah Counter:  Jorge

Vote Counter:  OPEN