Hello Fellow Toastmaster!

Begin picturing the possibilities for your weekend! What the mind can imagine, ingenuity can make real. Let’s goooo!

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📣 GGTM Club Announcements

Youtube for GGTM 🎥

Secretary Omar presented Youtube for GGTM during August’s Club Business Meeting. He also sent member-only comms on 08/08 to share more information and FAQs. Kindly take the time to review and confirm your preference in the consent form please so we can start working on your playlist!

For newer members who joined after 08/08, this info will be included in your onboarding checklist.

GGTM gets Smedley Award at TLI 🏆

The Smedley Award is a Toastmasters International level award which commemorates the founding of Toastmasters International on October 22, 1924. Getting one means the club has added 5+ members during the months of August and September. GGTM got this recognition at the Toastmasters Leadership Institute conference last weekend!

A complete list of District Awards are here: https://d4tm.org/district-awards

Member Milestones 🎉

• Welcome to the our six newest Golden Gate Toastmasters - Benzi, Ian, Amadeo, Kevin, Alex and Lucas!

• Congratulations Katie for your GGTM one year anniversary!

📆 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?"

Please reach out to [email protected] if you'd like to sign up for a role!

GGTM Open House

Date: TBD

Open House are special meetings designed to boost club membership. Last year, we ran it with Sierra Speakers Toastmasters and it was a great meeting with both in-person and online options! This year, GGTM will host another Open House and we hope to see you there so you get to know our club more!

The Moth: GUMPTION

Date: August 26

Looking for more stages to speak? The Moth StorySLAM is an open-mic storytelling competition in which anyone can share a true, personal, 5-minute story on the theme: GUMPTION. Sign up for a chance to tell a story or sit back and enjoy the show.

📈 Aug 13 Meeting Highlights

This week, Tanya who joined GGTM in the past couple of months, had her Toastmaster of the Evening debut and let everyone’s Imagination (theme of the evening!) roam free.

The meeting started with guests introducing themselves and sharing what technology they wish was invented. Key answers were Waymo to/from SFO, robots to do chores and brain implant to thing quicker on the spot (super helpful for Table Topics!)

With a full agenda and over 27 attendees ready to take the evening on, she successfully ran the meeting along with our other functionaries: Lindsey, Ian, Alberto, Clement, Michelle and Amadeo

The prepared speaking parts started with Shubham warming us up with a Wedding Toast with a boxing twist throwing in some lessons she learned from her boxing classes.

Four prepared speeches followed with our Toastmasters sharing key things about themselves:

• 📋 Scott breaks down techniques on how to give an effective evaluation. See his advise on the only three things we need to give a successful one on our Evaluation Tidbits section below

• 📈 Alexandra walks us through her journey from birth to teaching math and overcoming self-doubt

• 👨‍🎓 Nik practices his masters graduation speech, and reflects on his time in school and the influence it has had on his life (🏆 Best Prepared Speech 🏆)

• 🇨🇳 Alex shares some fun facts about the “small” town of Shanxi doing a re-delivery of a speech he shared over a year ago

Helen led Table Topics with a Willy Wonka and the world of candy theme! Alberto got the (🏆 Best Table Topic 🏆) sharing that if the golden ticket contest happened in 2025, they will have to get to the end of the intestine to find it and win the tour!

Thank you to our members and guests who spoke impromptu about their sweet imaginations: Jay, Yuri, Agasthian, Tavisan, Amber and Karishma

Albert led the evaluation section and Karishma got (🏆 Best Evaluator 🏆) for her review of Nik’s graduation speech. Thank you our other evaluators this evening - Helen, Val and Juan!

📚 Evaluation Tidbits📚

You only need three things to give an effective evaluation:

• Two sheets of paper

• A pen

• Unshakeable amount of confidence!

👁️ Through the eyes of the TME 👁️

Hear directly from Tanya on how the experience was for her as a first time TME:

The theme was imagination and I loved how other Toastmasters were able to weave it in - Alex with his questions on what new technology people would invent if they could invent anything new, to Helen's table topics on Willy Wonka and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. The speeches were all really good. It was inspiring to hear Nik's graduation speech as well as Alexandra's personal experience on 'being good enough' and her reframe. Alex gave a fascinating account of what his home province is like from early history to modern day politics and corruption. Scott shared his methodology for writing good evaluations that was very helpful. I tried my best to flow the transitions with commenting on how I saw imagination and creativity weaved in to everything. Being Toastmaster for the first time was fun! It was great practice standing up infront of an audience and facilitating a meeting - which of course can be used to practice for events/conferences as well. The challenging part was going through all of the Role guide which seemed overwhelming at first for a first timer, but then when you start on it and get it all down, the next times will be a breeze. It's really not as difficult or complicated as it looks, and I'd encourage people to sign up for the role even if they're new. Its one of the best roles that you can practice and learn the most from besides being in a speaking role. I also appreciated everyones guidance and direction, I appreciate being part of a team that works together so we can have great meetings and a good experience.

🏝️ 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

🧑‍🏫 Toastmasters Leadership Institute

On August 9, District 4 hosted the Toastmasters Leadership Institute with the keynote: Step Up! Speak Up! Lead! Several of our members joined the conference and here are their takeaways for us.

• Three-way mentorship program, with one mentor and 2 mentee is a great strategy for a large club with few mentors

• Mentorship can be 6-months and can be extended. Great for new members getting to know TM.

• Good way to reuse speeches is by giving them as guest speakers at other clubs.

🤫 City Lights and Secrets

In case you missed it, we hosted a highly successful storytelling event with Hotel Nikko on August 1. Our VPPR Nik has posted info about it on our socials:

🔗 LinkedIn: Golden Gate Toastmasters
📸 Instagram: @goldengatetoastmasters

If you want to read how it all went down, or for those who were there, relive the moment, checkout our special newsletter for it. See you all at a future event!

🎉 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!