Dear Fellow Toastmaster!

Everyone has woken up from the summer slumber and there’s a lot going on.

Let us recap the past and invite you to join us in the future ➡️

 🥳🥇 Awards and Celebrations

First Monthly Pathways Completion Awards done last night. Congratulations:

• Helen for completing Presentation Mastery Level 5 completing her PM Pathway!

• Scott for completing Innovative Planning Level 4

• Anagha for completing Visionary Communication Level 2

• Sheila for completing Presentation Mastery Level 1

The next one will be on October 2. Please start/log your Pathways progress AND sign up for prepared speeches slots - so we can celebrate YOU!

Don’t be shy, share your life wins and let’s celebrate together!

 📣 📆 Coming Up

All GGTM’s upcoming events automatically showing up in your calendar? Yes, please! Clink on the button and subscribe to our club’s Google Calendar.

• You should’ve received an email from our Treasurer Scott Brown about this. If you’d like to continue your membership please make payment before 09/30/2024.

  • Early renewals will gain early access to the new GGTM Discord server (18 members already on it)!

  • Reach out if you think your employer could reimburse your dues (many of our members had success with it, using the company’s learning budgets) - we will provide you with the necessary documentation!

• 09/09 (Mon) 8PM: GGTM Talk Tank Session (Meeting Link )

  • Come with any questions about Toastmasters and the club

• 09/13 (Fri) 5PM: GGTM Beach Bonfire Social: Join us for a GGTM bonfire at Ocean Beach Fire Pits! Firewood and hotdogs provided. Bring drinks, food and stories to share!

• 09/18 (Wed) 12PM: Toastmasters Showcase Session II

  • Please join us at the Embarcadero Bricks at 12PM for our second session. Let us know if you’re interested in participating!

• 09/18 (Wed) 6PM: Open House with Sierra Toastmasters

  • We are conducting a joint meeting with the Sierra Toastmasters.

  • If you ever wanted to bring it a new friend, this special format meeting is a great opportunity for it!

 📚️🏫 Toastmastering Together

Every person’s speech writing style is different, so today, we will share some pro-tips from the Toastmaster International website on Preparing a Speech.

The link has a ton of information and resources but it can be summarized in four key points:

1. Organize your speech in a logical sequence

2. Practice and rehearse a speech frequently prior to delivering it.

3. Become familiar with the stage and how to work it

4. Visual aids should fit a speech and should reinforce the points of a speech in unique and interesting ways.

Check out this amazing article telling us that speech topics are everywhere! This makes for truly personal but equally effective speeches to help you on your next one.

🤝 ♣️ September 4 Club Meeting Highlights 👀 by Alex L

Way to go Lauren for taking on the Toastmaster of the Evening role AND the Sergeant At Arms role.

• The theme for the evening was “Projection” as Lauren is taking a course on linguistics and is being more aware of how we express ourselves, so many details to be aware of. Thank you for the fascinating theme!

We welcomed 10 guests, many have signed up to become members of GGTM! Hooray!

Thank you for joining us this evening and we look forward to incorporating you more into our meetings.

Great job to our Functionaries for helping us run the meeting: Lauren, Katka, Katherine, Harris, Ed, Juan, Sheila, and Alex L.

Our word of the day was “Conundrum” - great job Lisa for using it 3x during her TT speech!

🙋‍♀️ Help run the Sept 11 meeting by signing up for roles! 🙋

During our meeting we:

• 🎤 Heard Alex Wu persuade us into not hesitating and to just go for any opportunity that presents itself, even if it's last minute; you might get a free breakfast or professional headshots during his two-minute special.

• 🚞 Learned from Amanda to manage our expectations when riding a train across the country on the California Zephyr, but she impressed our members and guests with beautiful language and depictions of the majestic canyons of Utah.

• 🎭 Sheila gave a Pathways L2 speech on Communication styles, and we learned her style is drama, backstory, and connection—the more color, detail, and emotion, the better!

• 🏆 Heard Scott evaluate a nearly perfect speech and win (🏆 Best Evaluator 🏆) for suggesting that Sheila eat a bowl of Cheetos to make it even better.

• 🏚️ Gene’s L1 speech, "Writing with a Purpose," explored a chaotic, post-apocalyptic Spanish town and encouraged us to take a second look at the details and not take everything at face value.

• 💪 Learned about how Monika turned her health diagnosis into an inspiring and impactful story, where she revealed the secret to living 14% longer in life and her journey from a tofu hater to a tofu lover, with lots of yummy and beautifully presented recipes as visual aids (🏆 Best Prepared Speech 🏆).

• 🎹 Congrats to our guest Adam, who so beautifully and concisely told us about his passion and determination to learn how to play the piano, even though he is not good at it (🏆 Best Table Topic 🏆).

• 🎤 Thank you, Jay, for being our Table Topics Master and encouraging our guests and members without a role to present really interesting impromptu speeches: Lisa, Sofie, Divya, Alexandra, Derrick, Shubham, Lee, Haewon, Karishma, and our TT winner Adam!

😎💡Member Spotlight

Doing anything fun? Share your adventures that we can highlight!

🫵🗣️ Your turn

We would like to hear YOUR stories, information and feedback to make this newsletter, our club and our Toastmastering better. Share it with us!