When a Speech is an Experience – It’s Toastmasters!

Monday night our sister club in Murphy, NC filled out their ‘Application to Organize’ to be officially recognized as a new forming club with Toastmasters International. The new “Smoky Mountain Leaders and Speakers Toastmasters Club” is well on it’s way with half the required Charter members already signed up. Congratulations are in order to them for all their hard work and to Gem City Forum for their sponsorship and continued support. Great jobs fellow Toastmasters.

Last night at our own Gem City Forum meeting, to say a great time was had by all would be a MAJOR understatement.

Nancy Porter was the perfect Toastmaster and all of our participants did a fine job in first describing their role and then performing them flawlessly.

Our two speakers Michele Hubbs and Liz Willard gave speeches that set a new standard of achievement.

Michele taught us that a speech can be a lot of laughs with one of the advanced speeches from the Humorous Speech book. She skillfully assembled and delivered a 6.5 minute string of puns with appropriate expressions and with numerous props to accompany each quip. The audience was mesmerized with laughter at her presentation, some even got a little squirt at the exactly appropriate point in her speech.

Then Liz delivered an “Ice Breaker” speech about a time from her past and a trip to NYC that included a very special memory of a chance encounter and conversation with Muhammed Ali. It was obvious to all that Liz has done some speaking before as she very skillfully used her facial expressions and her vocal variations to draw pictures in our minds of her encounter. We were all there in the hotel lobby as Liz graciously turned down an invitation to a private party and then explained to us why it was a good choice! Before closing with the autograph he’d signed for her at that time. Wow!

We again had several guests and I’m pretty sure that they will be coming back after the exhibition of speech mastery and smooth as a Swiss watch flow of a well organized and exceptionally well run meeting. Kudos all around.

If you missed it, be there next week and see what I’m talking about.

If you’d like to learn more about being a Toastmaster, try out our upcoming workshop throughout October “Speaking as a Critical Skill for Your Job” starting on October 5th and continuing through four weekly meetings and ending on the 26th. We’ll be mentioning this more in the coming weeks.

See you there!

Jim Alvord, CC
Dist. 37, Div.A, Area 11 Governor
Gem city Forum Toastmasters Club # 296