Newsletter for 4-28-8 Meeting

April 29, 2008 by Merrilee Morris.

The First Baptist Church Sandy Springs surprised us last night, April 28, 2008, when we arrived and found the temporary wall between the two meeting rooms open and a dozen or so round tables set up with table clothes and all. Several members commented on arrival, “This is truly a Speakers Roundtable meeting.” President Pat Schmalzried called the meeting to order and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Iris Grimm was our Toast Master for the evening. Merrilee Morris was General Evaluator. Pat, our President and acting Sgt at Arms, also served as our Grammarian. Volunteering as timer was Donna Satchell and Rui Li as our camera person.

Our first speaker of the evening was Kelly Vandever rehearsing her speech for the International Speech Contest this weekend. Kelly’s speech was totally polished, laced with humor, rich with Jody’s vocal characterization, and enriched with visually strong and meaningful gestures. Kelly wanted us to draw blood with our evals, but she didn’t leave us much to scratch at. She’s searching for a more appealing title than “The Arm Exercise.” You’ve got a winner, Kelly!

Speaker number two was Bill Kovach. He’s usually so warm and friendly, but this evening he was throwing things out of a bag all over the floor. That got our attention. Bill spoke on “Taking Out the Trash.” Plastics are not biodegradable. A disposable diaper will hang around a 500 years before sunlight breaks it down to smaller and smaller pieces. He spoke of Gyres which are areas in the ocean where debris fragments accumulate. Bill referred to these gyres as cesspools we couldn’t flush. He cited research that warned us of neo-natal malformations, diabetes and even obesity if we don’t start protecting our environment and ourselves from the all the plastic we toss into our world.

We had a six minute break of cookies, chips and dip, snack mix and donuts. Yes, much of it was in plastic containers!

The evening’s last speaker was Claudia Brogan. She spoke from the “Speeches by Management Manual” The Briefing. Claudia’s briefing was on the valuable use of time. Her handout of Time Quadrants kept us in step with where her discussion was taking us. What’s urgent, what’s not urgent, what’s important, what’s not important, what’s a necessity, what’s deception, Claudia gave us examples and tools for using our time in meeting our work goals. She then fielded a good five minutes of questions. Claudia responded to the questions with appropriate and insightful answers. She is definitely a master in her communication field.

Closing reports were brief. Rui Li recorded one speech on DVD, Kelly’s. Donna Satchell informed us that Kelly’s speech was 7 minutes on the nose. Bill 15 seconds over on his trash talk and Claudia used an extra minute for her speech, “It really is all about time.” Pat found a couple of ahs and ums. She also noted that Claudia had used the word of the day, “unelectable” twice! Merrilee Morris complimented Iris on her brief, yet informative introductions. Iris ran a professional, timely and fun meeting.

President Pat Schmalzried asked members to volunteer to be on a nominating committee to put forward member names for our new officer slate. New officers assume their positions in July. The new scheduled (May and June) was emailed to members 4/28. Roles for May 5 are as follows:

Toast Master: Claudia Brogan
Speakers: Iris Grim, Keith Schroder, Pat Schmalzried
General Evaluator: Vicki Willard
Grammarian: Paul Johnson
Camera Person: Bill Kovach
Timer: Paul Poodt

Respectfully submitted:
Merrilee Morris for Deborah Hill-Flach

Posted in News | Print | No Comments »