Night Vision Toastmasters (NVTM)

Hello everyone.

Theme for August 25: road rage. What causes it? Are some of us born with the ability to be calm and collected while driving? Or do we all have it in us to become crazed, bird-flipping, anger-prone, Mad Max maniacs?

The first part: what is road rage? (It’s not as clear-cut as you might think…..)

The second part: portrait of a “typical” road rager and how to avoid road rage.

What is the most awesome (or disturbing) road rage incident you have ever participated in or witnessed?

Best regards,
Matthew Gillard.

This week’s meeting theme is ‘A Toastmasters Meeting’.

High meeting quality is always the primary reason of a successful TM club, and every meeting role contributes to the success of a meeting. With our large membership and the further growth that our new venue allows, I think it’s time for both new and experienced members to learn or review how our ‘ordinary’ meeting roles can be done with extraordinary effort or fun twists.

Moreover, do you know it can take us less than 6 months to complete our Competent Leadership manual simply through taking meeting roles and getting evaluated by our fellow members?

Best regards,
Jenny Qian

Hey Gang

This meeting is our ‘All Speeches & Evaluations’ night. We’ve got 6 eager speakers all signed up and ready to go. We’ve also got 6 crack evaluators ready to provide their insights and observations.  It’s going to be a great night, please join us if you can!

Scott

Have you ever heard a song on the radio and thought to yourself “that’s terrible”, but when a different artist makes their own arrangement of that same song it becomes one of your all-time favorites?   Let me tell you, this has happened a lot to me over the past few months after listening to two of my favorite Podcasts, which feature Cover Songs.

So this weeks theme will be on… Cover Songs!   And yes, there will be some audio stimulus during this weeks meeting.

Can’t wait for this next meeting!

See you there!

Richard!!!

The theme this week is personal productivity.  Let’s face it, many
of us are overburdened with difficult tasks at work or at school.
There are just so many things that one wants to accomplish, but we are
often limited by time.  So how can we get all these things done?  The
answer of course is to be more productive!

There are many theories and I actually read a lot of business books on
productivity, and they guide me in doing things more efficiently and
prioritizing things more effectively.   They also guide me in setting
effective goals, and establishing a good plan in accomplishing them.
Furthermore, I understand how my mind functions, and how I can adjust
my working habits to maximize my performance.

During this week’s meeting, I want to discuss with you some of the
theories of productivity, along with my own personal experiences.  I
would also like members and guest to share some of their insights on
this useful topic, so we can all learn to be more productive. ”

Rudy

What’s so funny?  Why are we laughing?  Sense of humor. The Humorous Speech contest is coming this Fall. One of our guests last Thursday commented on how much laughter there was during our meeting.  We have some hilariously funny members in our club.  As the Toastmaster chair of the meeting, Thursday, I’ll look at humor, a little deeper:

The first part: What exactly is humor? Why do we laugh?  Why do some people laugh more than others? What do the scientists and historians say is going on… with humor in humans?

The second part:  techniques for producing laughter.

This Thursday we also have a special guest speaker, Angela Louie, who won 2nd place in the 2005 World Championship of Public Speaking in Toastmasters International, and who will be presenting a speech that will earn her the coveted Accredited Speaker professional designation - only 59 exist in the world and only 10% of the finalists achieve certification.

Lori

Have you ever had a feeling that you just knew something, but you weren’t sure how you knew what you knew? This week, we will be exploring the theme of intuitive guidance.
Your inuition is the small voice that tells you go, stop, act or wait. It’s the voice that always answers the question, “What do I need to know right now?” with beautiful dreams, messages and acts of synchronicity from the universe. We will look at how intuition can become a powerful personal and professional tool.

Sarah

The theme of this week’s meeting is ‘A Sense of Purpose’. How important do you feel it is to have a sense of purpose? Is it the motivator that drives you in life? Or do you feel it’s better to be carefree and go where the wind blows you?  Let’s discuss this on Thursday night!

Scott

There is a school of thought in education and child development that is taught in many training programs for teachers that states that IQ is flexible and that intelligence is not an inherent trait.

Carol Dweck is the leading proponent of this view, and in her book Mindset she discusses the disturbing trend of gifted children who grow up fearful of encounters that might challenge their own perception of their intelligence. This fear causes these children to opt out of difficult tasks and results in them being labeled as “lazy” or “not fulfilling their potential.”

Dweck’s solution is for parents and educators to stop praising children for being “smart” or other intrinsic traits that are fixed and start praising children for their effort instead. She believes parents should try to impart the correlation of effort to rewards in order to set up their children with the mental strength to overcome future obstacles. For those of you interested, there is an old but very informative article in NY Magazine on this topic: http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/.

What do you think? Are there geniuses and prodigies for whom everything comes easily? Do you believe that simple effort can make you the next Mozart? Or the next Einstein? And for those of you that are parents or teachers, do you see this effect that Dweck describes, of praising effort vs intelligence, in your children or students?

–Cassie

Hey All!

The theme for this week’s meeting is the Guinness World Records (enough with the Canucks already, right??)

Not long ago, I read an article in the Globe and Mail about a Filipino man who recently broke the world record for being the smallest man alive, standing a minuscule 23.5 inches tall at 18 years old. It got me thinking about other interesting and shocking world records.

During this week’s meeting, I will go over the history of the Guinness World Record organization, share with the group some awesome world records and, if we have time, let you all in on a world record I held for a short, short time…

What World Record would you LOVE to hold?

See you all Thursday!
–Andrew