Milestones recognized: Venkat Raman, Sandra Savage

Our meeting today was refreshing as it benefited from a sudden influx of nine guests! One of them was our very own Area Director, John Dinh. John was visiting us at the perfect time to let the guests see how member accomplishments are recognized. More on that later.

The evening started slightly off-balance, as some of the gates to enter the premises were locked up as this is a vacation week for the school district, our facility host. But we made up for it in having a well-attended, full length meeting that sported three substantial speeches.

Pravesh introduced us to the concept of Blockchain Technology and Sara helped us understand the aspects of healthy living that keeps food, exercise, sleep, and stress in balance. The unexpected bonanza was when John Dinh offered to fill an open speech slot with his presentation on how prepare for a speech! He also tripled up as an evaluator of Sara’s speech. John was wearing different hats today.

In addition to the prepared speeches, our table topics were also engaging our guests. A few of them volunteered to speak, always the fun part of our meetings.

The meeting ended with an opportunity to go through a mini-awards ceremony where an individual accomplishment was recognized by Pravesh, our VP of Education, and two members with district level accomplishments last year were recognized by John Dinh, in his capacity as our Area Director.

Venkat Raman receiving the OATM award from  John Dinh

John presented the plaque to Venkat Raman in recognition of his qualifying for the Outstanding Achievement Toastmaster (OATM) award. John also recognized a Triple Crown award (for completing three or more milestones in the year) to Sandra Savage, who was unable to be present at the club meeting.

Venkat Raman receiving the HPL certificate from Pravesh Kumar

In addition, Pravesh Kumar, VPE of our club, presented the Certificate of Completion to Venkat Raman in recognition of his efforts on a High Performance Leadership (HPL) project.

 

 

How to submit Pathways level completion awards and not lose them

We saw what it takes to keep making progress with Pathways for any member of a club. How they would work with projects in their current level of their path, and also how they flag to the VPE that they have completed a level.

Of course, we also touched upon what the VPE would do to approve that level completion and enable the member to proceed with the next level of their path. Without this approval, members cannot move on.

But none of this actually gives credit to the club, scoring points towards its distinguished status. The VPE must take another action, disjoint from the above.

Key decision taken for Spring Contest

You are likely already aware that we won’t have a fall contest this year. The earlier post assumed that the spring contest will have International Speech Contest and the Table Topics Contest as usual.

However, that assumption was off the mark as the change also brought in the option of choosing any of the available contests for one of the two spring contests.

We’re now on Meetup

City Speech has joined forces with several other clubs in Division I and is now featured in the brand new meetup created yesterday by Division I.

The new Meetup group, Power of Speaking, is still being filled out with meetup listings. Spearheaded by the expert guidance of Ken Chow, Architect of the whole setup, we have just been approved by meetup.com.

City Speech used to be part of a different meetup group and we have seen guests attending meetings through our listing there. With this renewed effort, there is more focus on managing these listings.

With the pool of clubs participating in this group all contributing to the listings, our calendar is surely going to look busy! We need to manage our listings well so that people browsing on the web take notice.

Exciting times for public relations!

We’ll keep you updated on how this works out for us as time goes on.

IF YOU MISSED TLI, HERE’S YOUR SECOND CHANCE

If you couldn’t make it to TLI on July 7th, you missed a good one. Check out some of the details of what went on that day here.

If you are a club officer, it is important that you get the training for the role(s) you play for the club. But don’t lose heart–makeup sessions are coming up in the next few weeks, until the end of August. You can train as needed, and your club will also benefit by adding DCP points. The latest on the schedule of these makeup session is available on our district website here.

For now, the following have been set up:

July 31 – Divisions D & E
August 4 – Division G
August 8 – Division C
August 10 – Division A
August 14 – Divisions D & E
August 17 – Divisions H & F
August 23 – Division B

Details of their locations and timings are available on the district calendar. Please choose one of these to attend if you need to get trained for your office.

These are not limited to club officers. Members can attend as well. This may help them understand the roles involved and get them prepared for future participation as club officers.