Ottawa Toastmasters

As my term as President of Ottawa Toastmasters ends, I would like to thank all the people who have made our club so successful this year. Once again, the club has achieved the highest possible distinction for a Toastmasters club: President Distinguished Club. This would not have been possible without the hard work and commitment of all our members. Even more gratifying was to hear our members share a mentoring moment at one of our club meetings. To hear a member relate how our Toastmasters club enabled them to achieve a personal goal or overcome a personal fear is extremely fulfilling. Of course, the year was not without its unexpected challenges as well and I would like to thank all the members who served on the executive with me; it was their energy and imagination that enabled us to overcome these challenges and facilitated the club reaching its goals. Perhaps our greatest achievement was to keep our meetings fun and energetic throughout the year. I was always delighted to hear guests exclaim that they never thought that a Toastmasters meeting could be so much fun.

Of course, one of the most satisfying experiences as a Toastmaster is to mentor a new member, to hear them speak with increasing confidence throughout the year as they worked through the Toastmaster program. It was a great pleasure to see so many of our newer members reach the point in their Toastmaster’s journey that they were willing to participate in the club speaking contests throughout the year. I was also proud to see our members perform so well in the various speech contests. It was a proud moment for the club to see Greg Miskie qualify for the Division Table Topics Contest against some very tough competition.

I am confident that our incoming President, Greg Miskie, will guide our club to even higher levels of achievement in the coming year. I am sure that under his leadership our club will continue to nurture a positive and supportive atmosphere where members will gain confidence and overcome their fear of public speaking. It will be a pleasure to serve on the new executive with him.

- Duncan Rens

Ottawa Toastmasters will be meeting on a reduced schedule for the summer. Instead of meeting weekly, our club will be holding biweekly meetings for the months of July and August. For July and August, our meeting dates are July 8th, July 22nd, August 5th, and August 19th. All meetings will be held in the downstairs board room of the Sandy Hill Community Center starting at 6:00pm. Weekly meeting will resume on September 2nd.

What is your career outside the club?

I work in the Research group of an account firm.   I manage the Market Analytics team.

How did you choose our club in particular?

When I first joined, it was an extremely convenient location – I lived about five minutes away. Now I’m in the East end, and it’s extremely inconvenient location-wise, but I just love the club to much to go anywhere else.

Did any members in particular have a strong impression on you early on?

For my first day as a guest, there happened to be a speech contest going on. There were tons of people there and I thought I’d get lost in the shuffle, but at least four separate members came by to introduce themselves and tell me about the club. In particular, Trish Wait (who was also chair of the contest and had two dozen other things to juggle) took a lot of time out to talk to me that day, which I thought was fantastic.

Once I joined the club, Andrea Harrison was an incredible influence on me. She coaxed me into competing in my first contest, she suggested I join the club executive (which I’m still on three years later). She’s given me so much great encouragement, and provided me with invaluable advice over the years.

Do you have a favourite speech you’ve delivered so far, or one that you thought was especially well received?

I gave a speech for the last Humorous Speech contest that I was pretty proud of. It was about working in a Country Western bar back when I was young (which is about sixty years ago). Twenty speeches in as a Toastmaster, you start to feel like you’ve run out of things to say and that everyone’s heard all your stories. But I managed to put together something that seemed original, and I though it went over well at the contest.

What is your favourite role to perform during a meeting?

I like being Toastmaster. It involves a bit of everything: preparation, organization, research, being able to think on your feet. You set the mood for the evening, you’re responsible for revving the energy level up. It’s a decent-sized responsibility, but when it goes well it’s a fantastic feeling.

In what ways do you feel your speaking skills have improved since you first joined?

I never thought I’d say this, but I don’t really get nervous any more prior to a speech. I owe that entirely to the club. I joined because of nerves, and also because of my habit of talking a mile-a-minute. I’m still working on improving in that latter area…

Dave has been a member of Ottawa Toastmasters since May 2006. He is currently working towards his Competent Leader and Advanced Communicator Silver.

You are invited to a very special meeting of Ottawa Toastmasters. On April 22nd, we will celebrate our accomplishments for this year. In addition to our regular club meeting, we will be holding a special awards honoring club members who have achieved educational and leadership awards this year. Please join us and see why Ottawa Toastmasters is not only the first toastmasters club established in Ottawa but also the funniest. Light refreshments will be served.

There is a ton of information — available online, through Toastmasters’ member material, and through each weekly meeting — that provides guidance on how to deliver a speech. Speaking tips are the cornerstone of the Toastmasters program. So in this post, we’ll focus on the role of the speaker: what’s expected from a meeting perspective.

Obviously, it’s important to come prepared. If you require any audio visual equipment, be sure you’ve made arrangements well in advance, and arrive early to test everything out. Far better to discover technical difficulties before the meeting begins as opposed to during your speech. If you have any other special requirements, special timing, lighting cues, planted audience participation — discuss these needs with the appropriate party before the meeting starts.

It’s also recommended that you have a quick chat with your Evaluator before the speech. If you’re working on something in particular that you’d like the Evaluator to watch for — your quick rate of speech, your use of crutch words, your tendancy to sway — bring this up beforehand. Alternately, if you’d like your Evaluator to tread lightly in some area (you’ve worked a sixty hour week and haven’t had much time to memorize your speech), this can be negotiated as well.

Finally, if you have to cancel your speech for whatever reason, don’t cancel it on the day of the meeting! For the Chair’s sake. Filling roles at the last minute can be very difficult; filling a speaking role at the last minute is next to impossible. If you must cancel your speech, do this several days in advance of the meeting so the Chair can make alternate arrangements.

Last night, the CMHC Toastmasters Club hosted the 2010 Division D Table Topics and International Speech Competition. It was an evening of drama, humour, education, and entertainment, and it featured a wide array of talented speakers. Ottawa Toastmasters was represented by Greg Miskie, who competed in the Table Topics Competition (after winning both the Club and Area level competitions). Greg did a fantastic job amongst very tough competition, and placed third overall. Congratulations, Greg!

There were both English and French language competitions. In the French contests, Alain Decelles from the CMHC took first in both the Table Topics and International Speech Competition. In the English contests, Teri Kingston from Advanced Speakers won the Table Topics Competition and Clarita Robinson from Sandy Hill Toastmasters won the International Speech Contest. Congratulations to all!

One of the basic principals of Toastmasters is that the more you put into it, the more you get back. The more involved you are, the more often you attend meetings, the more roles you try out, and the more speaking opportunities you take on – the richer your experience will be and the quicker you’ll learn.

Another way to further your involvement in the club is to become part of the executive. If you are a relatively new club member, there are several basic executives roles – like Secretary or Sergeant at Arms – that don’t require any significant prior experience. If you’ve been a Toastmaster for some time, you should consider one of the more senior roles like VP Membership, VP Education, or even President.

You club executive is responsible for: ensuring that club members pursue and meet their educational goals, building and maintain a strong membership basis, managing club funds, raising awareness about the club and major club events, running contests, filling each week’s agenda, and ensuring that all club meetings are dynamic, interesting, and enjoyable. It’s a tall order to fill, but with a diverse, committed executive team, club management can be quite simple. If you’re enthusiast about the club and about the Toastmasters program, and if you’d like to learn and grow even more than you have already, you should strongly considered joining your club executive.

Speech evaluation is all about balance. Typically there are three objectives that every evaluator needs to fulfill: briefly recap the speech, highlight the speaker’s strengths, and summarize a few areas for improvement. That’s a lot to accomplish in under three minutes, so it’s important not to let any one of the objectives overtake the entire evaluation.

The evaluation should also be matched to the experience level of the speaker. If someone is delivering an icebreaker speech, their evaluator should be especially encouraging. Similarly, if the speaker is quite experienced, then the evaluator should not be afraid to provide a more thorough critique. Milestone speeches should be celebrated by the evaluator; anyone achieving their Competent or Advanced Communicator should be applauded (figurative, and maybe even literally) during the evaluation.

Evaluations are easiest to deliver when the evaluator is familiar with the speaker and has seen a number of their speeches before. Where this isn’t possible, the evaluator can meet with the speaker prior to the meeting to discuss any potential areas of focus. Discussing objectivess and areas of focus pre-speech is an excellent practice, even in situations where there is a high level of familiarity between an evaluator and speaker.

At our February 14th meeting we had an extremely well-attended and enjoyable club contest. Thanks and congratulations to the record number of contestants (ten!) who participated.

Greg Miskie won first place in the Table Topics Competition, Catherine Hariton came second, and Asokan Thurairajah placed third.In our International Speech Competition, Andrea Harrison won overall, followed by Scott Minnes in second, and Gabriel Misaka in third.

Greg and Andrea will represent Ottawa Toastmasters at the Area 32 Contest on March 18th — which will be hosted at our home club. Be sure to come out and cheer them on to another victory!

If you’ve come to our site at this time of the year, chances are you’ve made some kind of resolution to work on your speaking skills. At Ottawa Toastmasters, we love a fresh calendar year because we can always expect an upswing in our membership. New members are the lifeblood of any club. They bring diversity, they ensure club continuance, and they help veteran members refocus on their core speaking skills.

You’ve taken the first step: finding a club and finding out about the program. Now, take the next step and visit our club. There’s no obligation and no commitment; anyone can come to three meetings as a guest, without being a member. And your involvement in this meetings is entirely dictated by you. You can actively participate, or you can just observe — whatever you feel most comfortable doing.

Come visit. You won’t be disappointed.