Dear Fellow Toastmaster!

With the right mix of passionate energy and equanimity let’s keep making our GGTM club experience and community better!

🚨 Never miss an update!

📣 GGTM Club Announcements

Club Picture Day and Club Business Meeting 📸

Our monthly Club Business Meeting is this Wednesday, 08/06. On top of club business items, we will also have a Club Picture taken to update our websites with our latest members. Please make it to the meeting so you can be part of it! Final agenda will be sent early next week via member-only comms.

🚨 We will have a shortened meeting of one hour this Wednesday (and every first Wednesday of the month!) to accommodate our club business meeting 🚨

New Member Process 🗳️

VPM Scott sent info about new member process that we have introduced this term. His email has the details on the participation required from the club members. This will be covered during our Club Business Meeting.

Peer Support Program 🙌

VPE Kyle did a speech and sent member-only comms about our fresh-off-the-press Peer Support (Mentorship) Program. Check your email for links to the mentor, mentee and buddy guide he presented along with the request forms to sign-up for each.

📆 Upcoming Events

Full list in GGTM Calendar!

Toastmasters Leadership Institute

Saturday, August 9 • 8am-4pm (Genentech Campus, South SF)

​Step Up! Speak Up! Lead! ​The upcoming Toastmasters Leadership Institute is a transformative event packed with must-attend sessions and activities for District 4 Toastmasters. We have over ten GGTM Members attending! Join us and see how to extend your Toastmasters membership beyond our club meetings!

📈 July 30 Meeting Highlights

We always strive to make our club meetings more productive and efficient. This led our officer crew to explore changes so our members and guests get the best of both worlds - get speaking time but also the space to be able to socialize during our meetings. And this night - we put it to the test.

Led by our Toastmaster for the Evening Sheila who needed help from everyone to be better at Energy Management (theme of the evening!), we had all the speaking spots full and was able to have an extended 15-minute socialization opportunity with light snacks included! We all learned that intentional focus, awareness and accountability is what makes things possible.

Thank you for our functionaries who helped make this a resounding success:
Helen, Nik, Tanya, Gene, Yuri and Sheila

We had four insightful prepared speeches which had us getting to know our fellow Toastmasters more:

• 🏴‍☠️ Christian used the Two-Minute special slot to practice the Best Man Speech he’ll deliver at his brother’s wedding this weekend! Michael’s (his brother) style is throwing pirate-themed parties on drainage tunnels and when Lauren (future sister-in-law) followed him there, he knew that they will end up getting married someday (someday is today!)

• 🦆 Nithila, Caltrain’s coolest cucumber commuter (longest alliteration of all time!) shared with us the wisdom she’s acquired from the Glucose Goddess, the Food Babe and recently Dr. Sims. She volunteered herself to be our Quack of the Year!

• ☕️ Michelle shared how a conversation with a gentleman from Ethiopia who holds so much pride for their world-class coffee had her thinking that working on her communication skills will enable her to get more of these impactful connections going with more people ( 🧊 Ice Breaker Speech🧊)

• 🎟️ Agasthian took us all in on a roller coaster of a ride to make sure that his dad gets his train ticket and reminds us that the universe is always conspiring for you. (🏆 Best Prepared Speech🏆) ( 🧊 Ice Breaker Speech🧊)

• 🙌 Kyle introduced the newly-minted GGTM Peer Support Program to put a structure on the coveted Mentorship ask from our members - and made us do work again, sigh!

Monika led Table Topics but having speaker complete a sentence so we got to know how they allocate their energy so they get to do things that make them feel alive but also take the time to slow down and recharge so they can do it all over again. Katie got the (🏆 Best Table Topic 🏆) ribbon sharing how her hefty paycheck enables her to do things she’s passionate about. Capitalist at heart, baby! (Her words, not ours! 😛)

• Thank you to our members and guests who spoke impromptu: Karishma, Jess, Alex L, Aaron, Lucas, Tanya and Gautam 🎤

Katie kept her streak and got (🏆 Best Evaluator 🏆) delivering an encouraging evaluation for Agasthian’s Ice Breaker speech using the rose-bud-thorn method highly praising how his amazing delivery of his heartwarming content had her thinking that this was a more advanced speech. She recommended introducing vocal variety to keep it more engaging.

• Thank you Alex Lexson for leading the evaluation section and to our other evaluators - Kyle, Albert and Gene - who by giving practical feedback to the speakers indirectly taught us all how to be better when delivering our own. That’s what the Evaluation section is for! 🔥 

📚 Evaluation Tidbits📚

• Introducing variation on one’s vocal range keeps listeners from zoning off

• Don’t apologize before you even start your speech

• Follow-thru with your hook

💗 Quotes of the Night 💗

“Ladies, eat before you move!”
- Nithila on her “Quack of the Year” speech

“The more you lose yourself in something larger, the more you will have.”
- Tanya on Table Topics

“Do things that make you feel engaged before and energized after”
- Jess during Table Topics from the “Designing your life” book

🏝️ 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

⚾️ Baseball Snacks, drinks, swag and fun at Oracle Park

On July 27, we headed down to Oracle Park to see a game live between the SF Giants and the New York Mets! We also got to celebrate with Lou Seal (whose full name is apparently Luigi Francisco Seal), Papa and Mama Seal and his mascot friends as he was inducted to the Mascot Hall of Fame. Always a good time being in the ballpark with overpriced snacks, drinks, good company, oh and yeah - baseball! 😆 

🌉 City Lights and Secrets

We are still hung over (iykwim) from the resounding success of City Lights and Secrets that we need to recover first to be equipped it to tell you all about it! We will showcase it on its own newsletter so stay tuned! Thank you Alex Lexson for providing this space for us to tell our secrets and stories of the city!

Here are some snippets from this wonderful evening!

🎉 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 let Omar or Sheila know!