Hello Fellow Toastmaster!

AI talk may seem superfluous, but a revolution is never tidy.

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📣 GGTM Club Announcements

💼 Club Business Meeting this Wednesday, September 3

Monthly club business meeting this Wednesday, Sep 3. We will have a shortened meeting and the second hour will be used to discuss club business and vote new member applications in.

📅 New membership model starting soon

Tenured members will be on the subscription model starting September.

📽️ A whole new, post-Yoodli world

1. As announced Yoodli as a videographer tool has since retired. We are now using a new video recording tool called OBS Studio and using Google Drive to store the recordings. Details are updated in the Videographer role guide if you sign-up for the role.

2. You might have also heard about the GGTM Youtube project where you can ask to have a playlist for your video recordings created.
   

3. There is a third layer where we’d share the responsibility among all of us to download our videos so we can optimize our Google Drive storage. There will also be a process to upload it accordingly if you want it to be part of your playlist. Stay tuned for the member-only comms with these details soon!

📆 Upcoming Events

Full list in GGTM Calendar!

Joint Meeting with Rhino Toastmasters

Sep 9(Tue) 5:45PM & Sep 10(Wed) 6:00PM

On September 9 and 10, we will be hosting two joint meetings with Rhino Toastmasters: GGTM at Rhino, and Rhino at GGTM. On Tuesday, we'll send a TME and 3 speakers over to the Rhino Meeting to run it GGTM style, and on Wednesday, they'll send over a TME and 3 speakers to run a GGTM Meeting.

The home clubs will provide the GE, evaluators, and functionaries. Instead of Table Topics, we'll have a 15–20 minute panel discussion and open Q&A with some of the away club members. The theme of the meetings will be: "How has Toastmasters changed your life and how can we change Toastmasters?"

We still need a TME for the Tuesday meeting at Rhino and most functionary roles for the Wednesday meeting at home! Please reach out to Scott if you'd like to sign up for a role!

📈 Aug 27 Meeting Highlights

On Wednesday, our weekly meeting is yet again saved by a last-minute sign-up for the Toastmaster for the Evening role. Val led the AI revolution and reminded us that uncertainty is a great feeling - as it gets us trained for the uncertainty that is life.

This is deep and all - but please sign-up for meeting roles earlier! We still need a TME for Wednesday!

The meeting started with our guests sharing how they utilize AI the most - from deep research, travel planning, having a conversation buddy on walks and utilizing it as a virtual assistant.

The meeting had all roles filled - literally until the last minute. Thank you to our functionaries for showing up: Tanya, Amadeo x2, Jason, Michelle and Sheila

For a two-minutes, Omar shared how counting down from 5 to 1 gives us the space to bypass excuses and promote action, sharing a story about how he stood up for the crooked printing on their wedding invites!

• ☕️ Michelle shared her continuing love story with coffee through her travel adventures around the world inside a cup.

• 🚘 Ian introduced himself to the club by sharing how he manages multiple panic attacks when making important conversation and likens Toastmasters to a driving school with less honks and more applause. (🧊 Ice Breaker and Best Speaker 🏆)

• 🏃 Scott spoke impromptu to fill a speaker spot which opened up and talked about how he got 2,000 people teargassed during a protest that he was made to lead on the spot

• 👨‍⚕️ Alberto shared how his interest in restoring functionality and seeing people benefit from results ultimately led him to his career as a surgeon being a “handyman of humans”. (🧊 Ice Breaker 🧊)

Sheila led Table Topics weaving in her journey from despising not warming up to AI to eventual change in perspective thanks to an inspirational talk at a conference. Guests and members answered prompts and shared their insightful experiences. Jin sharing his experience and learnings as a runaway and Jason sharing how his wedding sparked a revolution in his life got them sharing the ribbon for (🏆 Best Table Topic 🏆)

Thank you to our members and guests who took the stage and shared their own revolutions: Jay, Amadeo, Travis, Kelvin, Ian!

NIthila led the evaluation section once again reminding us to sign-up for roles earlier! Albert got (🏆 Best Evaluator 🏆) evaluating Alberto (they’re out to outnumber the Alex-es!) giving us a insightful look at why notes get in the way of us telling our story and gave practical advise to minimize the use of them.

📚 Evaluation Tidbits📚

1. Use storytelling as the antidote to the fear of public speaking

   You know your story best so go for it - tell your story, and don’t rely on notes!

2. Having anchor points allows the audience to follow your flow

   Timing indicators during the speech allows your listeners to be part of the journey that your story is taking them

3. Have a call to action at the end for the listeners

   This sends the audience off with the value of your speech after it ends

👁️ Through the eyes of the TME

Some profound analysis of the happenings this Wednesday from our TME, Val!

TBD* was plastered all over the agenda for this one. This was the last meeting I'd likely be attending for a few weeks due to work, so I definitely wanted to be there, and definitely wanted to do some eloquent blabbering in the general vicinity of the podium.

But to my surprise, all the speaker roles were filled right after the last meeting, as well as many of the auxiliary roles... but by Monday, still no TME in sight! What happened next was just a testament to the fact that perfection is the enemy of progress: some of the roles were left TBD on the printed agenda, as well as speech titles, descriptions, etc.; but we ended up having a successful meeting for two reasons. 
1) The meeting still had structure. The agenda still told us what to do and when to do it; we covered all of our bases and did it on time, just like a well executed speech. 
2) Our members stepped up. Just hours before the meeting, Sheila took on the work of running Table Topics and Note Taking. Jason, Amadeo, and Albert filled in for the remaining roles and the last Evaluator spot shortly before the meeting started. And finally, when it was made apparent mid-meeting that a prepared speaker was MIA, Scott Brown swooped in with an improvised and riveting 5-7 minute speech. 

So what's the lesson here? Almost every week many roles are left unfilled until the very last day, and I can imagine many of our plentiful members avoid signing up for much the same reasons we avoid public speaking: uncertainty about success. But, in truth, here is an anecdote about how what really matters is showing up and following the process, and we all left as slightly better Toastmasters for it. 

*TBD - Toastmaster Building Determination

🏝️ GGTM Beyond the Board Room 🏝️

Get to know our Golden Gate Toastmasters outside of our weekly Wednesday club meetings at the Chamber of Commerce Board Room. Subscribe to the GGTM Calendar to learn more about our club events and beyond!

📸 Member Spotlight

🎙️ GGTM Gumption at the Moth

On August 26, a couple of us went to The Moth open mic slam and dropped our name on the hat to tell stories of GUMPTION.

 Michael Dart and Nick Teodori got to tell their stories in front of over 200 people in Public Works. Mike shared how his gumption to face his fear of death led to a special relationship with someone in hospice care and Nick shared his gumption to make it in San Francisco.

The Moth happens once a month and here are the future events in San Francisco. Join us at a future event and get to tell your story on more stages!

🎉 Be part of the GGTM Newsletter! 🎉

Want to write a future issue or have something that you want featured with the club? Send a message to the #newsletter channel in Discord or approach Omar and Sheila (here is how we look like 😛).