Saturday, December 1, 2018

Dec 1, 2018 Toastmasters Meeting - Researching & Presenting PM1

Finally, I'm done with Level 1 of the Presentation Mastery path in Pathways. This is after delivering the 5th speech, Researching & Presenting. Presentation Mastery is my second path in Pathways. My first path is Innovative Planning although I'm not finished with it yet.

Shown in the photo below are (L-R): Standing: Guest Vi, Duchess Marie Cruz Munsayac, Nelle Cirujales, Marlyn Malinao, me, Ed Ramirez, Mark Nuqui, Guest Basher Toboot, Russell Santos and Leonzo Escolar. Sitting: Ching Bognot, Rema Manzano, Lita Hidalgo, Bea Indonto and Cristina Yung.

(photo credits: Cristina Yung)

Cassalu had installed new blinds at our meeting function room! Nice. Previously, they would tape up Manila paper or something similar on the glass walls to provide added privacy. The blinds make it now more convenient.



Free Cornucopia of Fruits

Our Grammarian today, Nelle, showed an interesting approach for the Word-of-the-Day which was CORNUCOPIA. To explain further the word of the day, Nelle brought along a platter of sliced fruits, thus illustrating a "cornucopia of fruits".

This, as well as posting the word of the day on the walls, made almost everyone use the word of the day effectively. Thank you, Nelle!


Smedley Award for 5 New Members

Our Club Founder, DTM Rema, today attended the meeting primarily to give us the Smedley Award. This award is to recognize a club's membership building efforts.

It is given for recruiting 5 new members in the period from August 1 to September 30. Winning clubs receive a ribbon for their banners and a 10% discount off their next club order.

Here's Club President Ching accepting the ribbon from Club Founder Rema.


I'm proudly raising the Smedley Award ribbon in the top group photo of this article.


Last Minute Speech Insertion

One thing that caused a bit of confusion in today's meeting was the insertion of a speech in the completed program. Roles were created off the fly to accommodate it.

I was supposed to introduce the first speaker who was acting as Presenter but I wasn't sure for what about. I was later taken aback when it was a mock awarding ceremony.

The advanced speech project is a bit familiar to me. But if I was confused, what more with the audience. They probably felt they were pulled into the Twilight Zone.

Even the Timer had no idea how to time the speeches. It was a 2-person, 2-part speech project. The Timer had no idea because it wasn't in the distributed meeting program.


Presentation Troubles

Just when I was ready to deliver, finally, my Researching and Presenting speech, I discovered there was a problem. There was no way that the venue's multimedia projector would work for my slides.

Somehow, the hdmi cable that was provided by the venue got lost. The staff assumed that a previous group that used the venue and gave a slide presentation mistakenly took the hdmi cable.

Still, I showed the slides, but just displayed them using Ching's laptop. Thanx Ching! I was worried though that the audience at the back wouldn't be able to see some of the text. Fortunately, there was little text and I only had five slides.



A Couple of Guests

We had a couple of guests today, Basher Toboot and Vi. Vi is a guest of Nelle's, while Basher came with Ed. Basher is originally from Libya and is currently studying (PhD) in the country. He's also a member of the Maharlika Toastmasters Club.


And that's... a wrap!