Area B51 Humorous Speech and Table Topic Contest Recap

What a fantastic contest!!  Area B51 Contest was held on Wednesday, October 11 at 7:00pm.  We had a full house of contestants, assistants, and guests.  All four clubs had representatives for the contest!  This is what I call a perfect contest!! :)

Golden Mountain - Trudy Boyer      

Lingo Advanced Communicators - Eileen Szakacs

Riverbend Toastmaster - Rizwan Kanji

ToastMapsters - David Reid and Maribel Goshko

LtoR: Edith, Trudy, Eileen, Daniel, and Maribel

LtoR: Edith, Rizwan, Trudy, Daniel, and Eileen

It was an awesome facility that ToastMapsters hosted, it was at their office location, Alberta Pension Services (APS).  The contest started with the Humorous Speech which brought lots of laughters to the room.  Our table topics would be the most nerve-wracking contest!!  The one question that all contestants had to answer was “If you could take anyone on a bucket list adventure with you, who would it be and what would you both do?”  It was great to see the places that contestants come up with and the person they would bring along to the journey!  

Most Importantly,  the winners of the contests are… drum roll please… 

Humorous Speech Contest - Daniel Reid (1st) and Maribel Goshko (2nd) 

Table Topic Contest - Rizwan Kanji (1st) and Daniel Reid (2nd)

Congratulations to all the winners and especially the contestants for putting their effort into this contest.  A contest will not be successful without you guys and a group of assistants helping out:

Contest Toastmaster - Edith Baraniecki (Lingo)

Sgt-at-Arms & Contest Chair - Wendy Lam (Lingo)

Ballot Counters: Nadim Kalim (Riverbend) and Maggie Sun (Golden Mountain)

Timers: Kate Wan (Golden Mountain) and Sylvia Periera (ToastMapsters)

Thank you for all your hard work!

Last but not least, our list of judges, our Chief Judge, Wang Yip, did a tremendous job in guiding our judges and assistants!  Also to the rest of the judges who needs to be remain anonymous.  Thanks again for taking time off your busy schedule to come, your help is greatly appreciated!  

We even finished on time!  The Division B contest will be held at Devon on October 28, 2017.  More information will follow.  I would like to wish all contestants the best of luck as they advance to Division and hopefully District level at the Fall Conference!!! Please cheer on them!!

Speaking to Inform Workshop – Oct. 3 & New Member: Matthew!!

Submitted by Melanie Kruger

Dave Cartledge, DTM (or rather Golfer John Daly) facilitated the Speaking to Inform Workshop, noting that we are already daily do speaking to inform. Dave mentioned there are four reasons for speaking: about objects, processes, events. He had groups break into small groups to discuss and share ideas with the larger group about examples they have seen at Toastmaster meetings they had attended. Dave also provided the audience with a handout on THINKING. Thirteen attended, including guests: Estella, Karen, Kim, Margaret, and Matthew. Congratulations to Matthew Mercredi for joining Lingo and becoming our newest member!

Melanie Kruger, ACB ALB or rather Morticia Addams (too bad we didn’t get a picture) took us through Project 3 – The Demonstration with a visual process complete with some common household items and tips for how we can get rid of too many things cluttering up our physical living spaces and how clutter can negatively impact both our mental well-being and even our weight! Start with not only the intention to declutter, but also take action. Have three bins available to sort your stuff into:  Keep, Toss/Donate and Unsure. Once you’ve identified the items to keep, put them away right away. For Toss/Donate box up and remove from your home right away. For Unsure items, box for 30 days, revisit after 30 days and give away whatever was not taken out of the box. Repeat this whole process again after 30 days. If clearing out your entire house is too much, start in 15-30 minute spurts. Tackle the junk drawer, then a closet one day. Next day, pick another small project. People in generally have a hard time parting with stuff either due to sentimental reasons (guilt) or ‘someday’ the stuff will be useful. Realize that ‘someday’ never comes and you don’t need to feel guilty for parting with items that are no longer useful to you or your family. This speech was based and inspired by Adam Dachis’ weblog De-crapify Your Life! For further details review Dachis’ weblog: https://lifehacker.com/5804927/how-to-de-crapify-your-home.

Rick Lebeuf, DTM provided a verbal evaluation of Melanie’s speech. Edith Baraniecki, DTM promoted her workshop on Specialty Speeches (Item 226E) taking place on November 7^th and successfully recruited three speakers/participants – Cherry, Dan and Eileen.

Rhys Davies, DTM is the next Toastmaster for our October 17 meeting. Area Director Tolu Adelowkan will be in attendance. The theme is Halloween. Please come dressed in your best Halloween costume! Booriffic decorations and Spooktacular treats will be provided once again! All Toastmasters and guests are welcome to attend.

Humourous Speech and Table Topic Contest 2017

What a fantastic contest! For those of you that don’t know, Lingo Advanced Communicators held their Humorous Speech and Table Topic Contest on Tuesday, September 19th.  We had a great turn out despite the bad weather we had.  With Judges, Contestants and Guests, we had around 20 people.  We had Mike Morin started the meeting, Mike is not a current member of our club and am glad that he was able to come out to help with our contest.  We look forward to seeing you more at our club in the near future!! Peter Kolotyluk was the Toastmaster who incorporate humour throughout the contest.  Peter did an excellent job and his Table Topic questions were interesting and yet hard  to answer in my perspective.  I was glad that I wasn’t a contestant!

We had our Humorous Speech contest, both Rhys Davies and Eileen Szakacs gave an exceptional speech and it was tough on the judges.  The winner came out to be the “cat”, I am sure everyone knows who that is.. Rhys Davies.   Both Rhys and Eileen will represent Lingo in the Area 51 Humorous Speech Contest.  As for the Table Topic contest battle.. it sure was a tough one between Rhys Davies, Eileen Szakacs, Bob Barker, and Robin Changarathil.  The winner of this contest was Eileen Szakacs.  Both Eileen and Bob will be representing Lingo in he Area 51 Table Topic Contest.  You maybe wondering why we are sending two people.  The reason is that we have 4 clubs in Area 51.

We wish all the contestants the best of luck in the Area 51 Humorous Speech and Table Topic Contest.  As for the date, I believe our Area Director announced it to be Thursday, October 19, stay tune on the location!!  We hope all of you can come and cheer our contestants on!

How can a contest succeed without a bunch of dedicated assistance and judges.  Thank you to Dan McCosh and Dave Cartledge for being our ballot counter, Melanie Kruger and Edith Baraniecki for being our timer,  Mike Morin for being our Sgt-at-arms, and our Toastmasters Peter Kolotyluk.  Thank you to all the judges who came out, who I cannot name for taking your time out of your busy schedule to help us out.

Last but not least, our contest chair Rick Lebeuf who was unable to attend for all the work you did lead up to the contest!

Our next meeting will be a workshop presented by Dave Cartledge and Melanie Kruger on “Speaking to Inform”.  If anyone is working on this manual, you will not want to miss this workshop!  Bring your manual, ask questions, that may help you come up with ideas you can present!  We will be posting more information on this workshop by the end of this week!! Stay tune!!

How to Judge a Contest Recap

Our September 5th workshop on judging speech contests provided many answers about judging, thanks to Toastmaster/facilitator Rick Lebeuf, DTM. However, it also raised the question "Is sex involved?" Actually the question should  be "Does gender matter?" Since in our group it almost seemed like the women leaned towards the female speaker and the men towards the male speaker. But then, as we worked through the scoring, we realized that being able to hear the speaker clearly made a huge difference. Something judges should consider when selecting where to sit when judging.  Interesting that some participants scored all sections relatively low and others scored all sections relatively high compared to the next judge, but as Rick indicated, there is no right or wrong scoring, it is your score and there is room for subjectivity.  All in all, it was a very enlightening evening for eight Lingo members and five guests, even for this old judge.  Looking forward to our speech contest September 19th.

Organizing a Club Speech Contest Workshop Recap

Submitted by Edith Baraniecki DTM

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, it is speech contest time.  On August 15th, Edith Baraniecki, DTM facilitated a workshop on "Organizing a Club Speech Contest."  The logistics for planning and conducting contests, in particular tabletopics and humorous speech contests, were reviewed. This included the eligibility rules, the forms needed and the roles of chair vs chief judge, timers, ballot counters, and the most important person in a contest, the contestant.  We were fortunate enough to have a real live contestant, Collin Greene, give two speeches at the workshop in preparation for representing District 99 at the International Convention, where he did the District proud.

The number and qualifications of judges for the various levels of contests was touched on but our next workshop "How to judge a contest" will give you everything you ever needed to know on judging contests.  You won't want to miss this September 5, 2017 workshop facilitated by Rick Lebeuf, DTM a former District 42 and 99 Chief Judge.  This workshop will prepare you for your own club contest either as a contestant or in a judging role.

Note that Lingo Advanced Communicators' speech contest is September 19th 7-8:30 pm at the Riverbend Residence by Revera.

Lingo Meeting (July 18) Recap & Membership Induction

We had one of our regular meetings on July 18, 2017.  I know you are thinking regular meetings? Doesn't Lingo Advanced Communicators do workshops?  We do both.  Workshops are usually the first Tuesday of the month.  Regular and other meetings as well as educational are on the third Tuesday of the month.  That way members get an opportunity to do speeches, often based on earlier workshops, and to practice table topics.

The theme of the meeting this week was "culture."  Culture in the sense of social beliefs and norms. Toastmaster Rick L started the meeting with an explanation of the current culture of our club.  For example, fairly unique to our club is having an ears and eyes speech evaluator along with the objectives speech evaluator.  Rick challenged us to explore our culture and roles and responsibilities further in future gatherings.

We had the privilege of hearing a good will speech (Public Relations Advanced Manual) by President Melanie K.  Her speech about self-confidence gave us six points to guide us in developing self-confidence of which Toastmasters is the perfect place to do that.  Peter K entertained us with an almost mythical speech that left us guessing until the very end.  Well done Melanie and Peter.

Robin C asked some very challenging scenario questions concerning guests and club customs.  Perhaps he could be convinced to publish the questions for everyone to ponder. Bob B won the best table topics invisible award.

One of our newest members and most experienced toastmaster, Dave C, led the evaluation team, in giving meaningful evaluations. Something as simple as telling us to consider what our background looks like.  Now it would have helped if the writer would remember to bring the banner.  

Ellen (L) and Eileen (R) got inducted at our Year End Celebration in June 2017

L to R: Dan, Melanie, Dave, and Von got inducted at our Club meeting by President Melanie

President Melanie took the opportunity to present new member certificates to Dave C, Dan M, and Von Eric T.  Two other new members, Eileen S and Ellen S, received their certificates at our year end celebration when we saluted Canada's 150th birthday and had new club officer installations.

We have an exciting year ahead with several workshops and educational sessions already scheduled. Upcoming workshops are listed on Lingo Website

Lingo Workshop Recap: The Power of Ideas - July 4, 2017

Nine members and five guests took the opportunity to explore expanding their ideas.  Thank you to Peter K in leading this exploration.  We learned the difference between "divergent (broader) and convergent (narrower) thinking." We were asked to "develop our imaginations" with a "what if" situation. Then we were able to use "option thinking" regarding several Toastmasters issues. Next we used "opportunity thinking" discussing the things that bug us and possible marketing opportunities to correct the "bug."  "Creative guesswork" gave us several laughs when determining why we may have received a huge shipment of dog food delivered on our doorstep.  One suggestion was a fatigued drone. Using "mental calisthenics" we suggested several alternate uses for a paper clip or a ball-point pen.  When "creating combinations" such as  ice cream writing or blanket computer, we really stretched our thoughts.  Lastly we used "brainstorming" to discuss ways to enhance membership - some very interesting suggestions - one - we will definitely not go with.  All in all, it was a fun and informative workshop.  Well done Peter.  Thank you guests John, Cherry, June, Julie and Tonya for attending.  Our next meeting is July 18th with Rick L as the Toastmaster for the evening. 

Submitted by Edith Baraniecki