Winners!

Hello Everyone - First time chair Vince Capicotto chose as the theme of the June 4th meeting "Lotto Toastmasters" and fittingly, chose as the word of the meeting "winning".  It truly was a winning meeting as we welcomed four guests, Elena, Hendrik,Thorston and Andrew.  Three of our guests signed on the dotted line and are now full fledged Bolton Banters. Congratulations and welcome to the club.  We were also pleased to welcome Area 15 Governor Theresa Murray and Corina Simu's daughter Alexandra. 

For the Table Topics portion of the meeting, Catherine Keyes passed around a talking stick and asked people to craft speeches describing "mistakes and screw ups".  Who couldn't relate to that?  We learned that some of our fellow Toastmasters have made some interesting fumbles.  Corina Simu took the ribbon in this event. 

This evening Minnie Grewal made a presentation from the Better Speaker series, "Organizing Your Speech".  Minnie reminded us of a familiar Toastmaster adage.  Start your speech by telling your audience what you're going to say, then say it, and conclude by telling everyone what you've said.  She used the inspiring story of Mahatma Ghandi to illustrate her points about effective speech organization. 

Interestingly, our two speakers, Eric Solowka and Carol Dowell, both DTMs and both working again on the Competent Communicator manual, presented speeches based on project #2 in that manual, "Organizing Your Speech."  Organization is indeed critical to good speech crafting.  Eric's speech, entitled "The Millenials", spoke about the current generation that seems to be perpetually tied to a screen of some sort, whether that is a computer screen or one of those  handheld Blackberry contraptions. 

In her speech, entitled "Change", Carol asked us to imagine a morning without coffee.  Not possible Carol!  Actually the coffee was a metaphor and it led Carol to challenge us to "change the picture, change the outcome".  In these wobbly economic times, we need to change our expectations.  Rather than vowing to see the world, we may have to be content to explore the wonders of our own beautiful backyard, the province of Ontario. 

Carol reminded us of officer training, to be held June 11th in Newton Robinson.  You don't have to be a member of the executive to attend.  It's a good way to learn more about executive roles you perhaps would like to take on in future.  Carol also announced that a roast for Eric will be held on July 21st, location to be confirmed.  You don't want to miss this event. 

Thanks to those who took on roles for the first time.  Thanks also to Brendan for bringing those yummy cakes to mark the club's third anniversary.  We meet again on June 18th.  See you then.  Cheers - Lorraine Van Wagner, Webmaster