Toastmaster & President Kerstin Haase opened the meeting with an acknowledgement to the injustice meted to 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till, an African American teenager who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family’s grocery store. Till posthumously became the icon of the civil rights movement because of the brutality of the crime committed against him. Remembering the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States, Kerstin expressed hope and faith for change to happen, and because change is driven by people. She reminded us that one of the ways to bring change as toastmasters, is to continue to acknowledge the unconscious bias we may demonstrate when speaking and support each other to become competent speakers by addressing those biases.
Toastmaster of the day, Anu Parvathaneni, greeted members, and gave an overview of the roles for the session. Introducing the “Word of the Day” (WOD), “Lollygag,” meaning to spend time doing things that are not useful or serious, Anu called upon John Doggett to introduce the next speaker of the day.
Toastmaster John introduced the only speaker of the day, Toastmaster Savannah Murphy, to deliver their speech titled, ‘Seeing Through the Spin,’ highlighting the good, the bad, and the ugliness of marketing tactics. Having experience in implementing major branding initiatives as a marketing professional for over a decade, Savannah, offered three tricks to see through marketing tactics and their impact on our everyday life. Using personal anecdotes combined with research, examples, and statistics, Savannah walked us through ways to recognize and approach marketing tactics and how to address them. The speech concluded with a call to pay attention to what we see, read, and reflect on what is being marketed before choosing to consume a product or a service.
Toastmaster John appreciated Savannah’s candid speech on ways to question what is being marketed. Commenting on an exceptionally prepared speech, John commended the informative and eye-opening nature of speech, and Savannah’s ability to keep us engaged with purposeful eye contact, vocal clarity and variation, and appropriate hand gestures. Remembering the quote he had learned a while back, ‘Stop standing still and start standing up,’ John shared how the speech made us all actually take a hard look at what we read and understand before making our choices.
Toastmaster Hema Kellett then led the table topics session using the word of the day Lollygag and engaged members with questions inviting them to respond on their personal experiences and thoughts on lollygagging. Members responded with much drive and enthusiasm, and shared personal experiences with the topics.
General Evaluator Kerstin applauded the smooth running of the meeting and reflected on the continued learning and growing we do together as toastmasters. She also commended the exceptional table topics questions that were engaging, thought provoking, and fun.
Timer, Norris Bass, shared speech times for all participants. Grammarian, Tina Joe, pointed to the occasional use of fillers ‘ah,’ and ‘ums,’ and use of word of the day in the speeches, in addition to acknowledging few clean speeches.
Toastmaster Anu recapped the roles for next week and thanked everyone for going with the flow this morning, before passing the conversation over to President Kerstin for her closing remarks. President Kerstin officially adjourned the session.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be at 7 a.m. EST on September 6, 2024. If you would like to join our meeting as a guest, contact us for the meeting link.
The roles for the next meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Stiles
Speaker 1: Dave
Speaker 2: Open
Table topics: Savannah
Gen Evaluator: Norris
Evaluator 1: Hema
Evaluator 2: Open
Timer: Saraswathi
Grammarian: John
