Hi Fellow Toastmasters & friends! 

And Happy Chinese New Year 🧧 🐉!
Welcome to the first of our February newsletters from and about the Golden Gate Toastmasters Club. 

Thank you for engaging with our first two newsletters and for continuing to share your feedback. If there is anything you’d like to see more or less of, let us know! 

Our meeting this Wednesday, February 7th, was not our usual format but we’ll dive into that in just a second.

But first:

[***Officer Election Results***]

• Following Immediate Past President Helen’s Club Address last meeting, we held an official Club Officer election to vote in the Officers for this term.

• Thank you to all active members who participated in the nominations, discussions, campaign speeches, and voting! This was democracy at its finest, like turning time and reliving the times of Demosthenes in Athens 🇬🇷🏛!!

• Thank you to the Election committee, Ronan, Edward and Alex C for ensuring the ballot collecting and counting went without a hitch. And to Helen for leading the proceedings.

• Drumroll please 🥁🥁🥁….. your GGTM Officer Team for Jan-June 2024 terms are as follows:

  • President - Scott Brown

  • VP of Education - Saloni Shah

  • VP of Membership - Katka Sabo

  • VP of Public Relations - Juan Basulto

  • Sergeant at Arms - Alex Wu

  • Treasurer - Nick Teodori

  • Club Secretary - Helen Fream (also Immediate Past President)

• The elections for next term (June-December 2024) will be held in May.

[officer announcements]

• 🗣️ A reminder from Scott, GGTM Club President: Our meeting on Feb 21st will be a club contest night, featuring two competitions: the International Speech Contest, and the Evaluation Contest. Sign up to compete, or for a functionary role here! 

• 🎳 Also a reminder to: SAVE THE DATE for the upcoming GGTM Social on Wednesday Feb 28th 6pm at Mission Bowl to mingle without the formalities of a meeting.  

OK, on with the fun stuff.

For those of you who were present last night, this is a recap, for those who weren’t - here’s what you missed:  

***

[meeting notes]

• Due to the club election in the second portion, we had to shorten our usual meeting format. That said, we were able to squeeze in prepared and informal speeches, as well as the evaluation section.

• The Toastmaster for the evening was Helen who chose a theme of ‘Opportunity and Growth’ for the meeting.

  • As she shared, this is not only her theme for the year, but also describes the Toastmaster experience perfectly.

  • What we appreciate about GGTM is the opportunity to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones to grow into better public speakers and leaders. 

• Thank you Alex C, Alex W, Juan, Sheila and Edward for taking on functionary roles and for ensuring the smooth running of the meeting agenda. A special shout-out to Sheila and Juan for taking on roles they’d not done before.

[prepared speeches]

We had 2 prepared speeches in our short format, as follows

1. Ronan’s Speech “The Island” was an informative and lively speech about the island of Ireland. It was full of historical nuggets, lighthearted quips, and geography lessons. We enjoyed our Ireland 101 lesson and look forward to the 102 installment.   (🏆Best Prepared Speech Award🏆)

2. Sheila followed up her 2 minute special last meeting with her 🏆 Ice Breaker Speech 🏆 with the theme of fried chicken (spoiler alert Jollibee is her favorite). Sheila was able to weave in the concept that memories and food are so closely related and shared why fried chicken brings her so much joy. We were all feeling hungry by the end!

[table topics]

Helen also presided over our short Table Topics section this week with some questions from her handy list of ‘365 Table Topics questions’ (there is one for each day of the year!). She focused on questions that related to the theme of growth and opportunity. Edward wielded the clicker throughout to help with our filler words!

• Ashanti shared what Opportunity and Growth in 2024 means to her and that growth is painful, but necessary! 

• Pratish had many pearls of wisdom to share with us all including the line “If you don't experience the lowest of lows in your life, you will never experience what it feels like to be at the highest of highs.”   (🏆 Best Table Topic Award 🏆)

• Lauren (guest-soon-to-be-a-member yay!) was the first guest to take to the lectern and talked us through the opportunities she created in 2023 for herself.

• Ed (also guest-soon-to-be-a-member yay^2) followed with his learnings about embracing fear, especially by joining Toastmaster meetings (we look forward to having you as a member, Ed!). 

• Last, but by no means least, Dodi (1st time guest) talked about the opportunities she has had to travel as a student and that she would like to continue to travel the world if money and fear were no object!

[evaluations] 

1. Scott evaluated Ronan’s speech and commended his use of props and how fact-filled the content was. He also praised Ronan’s comfort with the topic and that he enjoyed his professor vibes. Scott rounded out the evaluation with some delivery tips, for example the board/props shouldn’t be looked at (like the Basilisk in Harry Potter). He also suggested Ronan think about the purpose of the speech to help focus the message and connection with the audience. 

2. Saloni focused on how relatable Sheila’s Ice Breaker was in terms of connecting emotions, memories and food. She also praised Sheila’s use of eye contact and not relying on notes. She suggested Sheila could challenge herself by moving around more and using body language to help transition elements of the speech.  

[guests + new members]

We had the honor to welcome 10(!) guests - Lauren, Prathyush, Ed, Loren, Elizabeth, Amanda, Dodi, Louis, Lipika and Kristin, some of them returning guests or  former Toastmasters. 

We also had a great active member turnout with 13 of us participating. 

We’re looking forward to our next meeting on February 21st, where we will be holding our Annual Club Speech Contest!
Sign up to compete, or for a functionary role here! 

We’ll be back to our usual meeting format on March 6th.


Outspokenly & Democratically Elected Yours, 
Golden Gate Toastmasters Officers Team