XLTM Meeting Minutes for November 5, 2006 (by Bing Wang)

The following members attended the meeting: Bing, Brick, Cindy, Cunlin, Jenny, Jin, Joby, Josh, Len, Liqun, Lillian, Mei, Minghui, Robin, Sherry, Stan, and Will. This is the first open house meeting of this toastmaster year! There were about 8 guests showed up. It was a full house meeting!

Mei hosted the meeting as the Toastmaster of the day. She started the meeting on time at 12:45 by welcoming everyone, especially all the guests. She explained every single meeting role on the agenda since we have many first-time guests.

Len gave “Thought of the day” by encouraging us to exercise our rights and fulfill our responsibilities to vote since Election Day would be next Tuesday.

Cindy presented the word "contemplate", which is a verb, means to consider thoroughly; think fully or deeply about: to contemplate a difficult problem. A few people used the word in the meeting.

Jin gave humorous guidelines regarding differentiating republicans and demonstrates. I was not able to recall all the details, so I contribute the following story I received before on the same topic: Two people were walking down the street when they came to a homeless person. The first one gave the homeless person five dollars out of his pocket. When they came to another homeless person, the second one walked over to the homeless person and gave him directions to the welfare office. He then reached into the first one's pocket and got out twenty dollars. He kept $15 for administrative fees and gave the homeless person five. The first one is a Republican, while the second one is a Democrat.

Liqun, was the first speaker and delivered "Challenge yourself" based on Competent communicator manual (CCM) #9. He reviewed his toastmaster journey, which started about the same time a year ago. He gave all the credits to XL club and toastmaster organization regarding his improvement of public speaking skill and leadership skill. He used his personal story as testimony to encourage all the guests to join our club.

Josh, our current club president, gave a speech titled “What can toastmaster do for you” (CCM #10). Josh covered 3 areas regarding the benefits he has received – his children love this program, he enjoyed more fellowships, and he has more confidence in his career.

Will delivered a report on "Lessons learned from the northwestern leadership series". Will was the founder and facilitator of this program. He reported the encouragement, challenges and rewards through this program. Will used to be our club mentor and have contributed significantly to the success of our club. Now Will is qualified to apply for the distinguished toastmaster (DTM) award - the highest honor a toastmaster member can achieve. Congratulations to Will! You certainly deserve it!

Break at 1:37pm, raffle drawing was conducted and winners were rewarded with automatic pencils. The meeting resumed at 1:43pm.

Minghui hosted the table topic session, asked the following questions:

What were the challenges you have experienced since you joined our club – answered by Liqun.

What have you benefited for toastmaster program in your PR work - answered by Lilian.

What make you decide to join our club – answered by Joby.

Two of our guests gave their comments regarding our meeting.

Bing hosted the general evaluation session. Sherry, Brick, and Cunlin evaluated the speeches given by Liqun, Josh and Will respectively. Stan gave a detailed grammarian report and Jenny gave the timer report. Bing gave a quick summary of the meeting since the time was running short. He praised everyone’s efforts, especially Mei, who conducted the meeting so well.

Best speaker went to Josh.

Josh led the club business session. 2^nd round of raffle was conducted with a few winners including one of the guests, who received a gift certificate to Shan-Sui restaurant donated by our club member Eric Chen.

Toastmaster fall conference will be on this Friday (11/10) and Saturday (11/11). Come to see World champion speaker Edward Hearn (2006), who is from our very own District 30! Use the link below for schedule and location information:

http://www.toastofchicago.org/fallconference.htm

The meeting ended just before 2:30 pm.