Twenty-seven members and guests filled the conference room in Building E at 5775 Glenridge Drive.  It was warm “Hellos” not only to our visitors, but also to members who’d been missed during their extended absences.  We were all in a dynamite mood, ready for a dynamite meeting and Toastmaster Keith Schroder and his speakers did not let us down.  Keith’s theme was “Getting organized.  No seriously.”  Throughout the evening he dropped in helpful hints, such as correctly labeling your files and filing.

“The Visual Scope of Personal Marketing” was our first speech of the evening.  Rich Hart used his 6-8 minutes to tell us how to market ourselves.  He did this using the acronym SCOPE, which he wrote in swooping, huge letters on the white board.  Rich encouraged us to find our S which was specialization.  We needed to identify our skills and talents in order to market them.  C was to market ourselves with Creativity.  Originality is marketing what somebody else is not doing that you can do.  Personality includes a happy outlook on life.   He finished the acronym with Elasticity, the ability to be very flexible.  SCOPE.  Rich’s speech was polished, the acronym a memorable personal marketing tool, and shouting LIAR at us a couple of times was even a neat and memorable learning tool.  Thanks for some great self-marketing tips, Rich.

Clean your car, don’t drive around submerged in fast food papers and empty water bottles.  Yes, that’s the organization tip Toastmaster Keith suggested   as he prepared to introduce our second speaker, Kelly Vandever.  Kelly had been in touch with members most of the week reminding us to bring our lap tops, Blackberries, and wireless something or other.  Her speech, “The Twitter Backchannel:  A Presenter’s New Best Friend” already had everyone’s interest!  Kelly told us what she was going to tell us, she defined her terms such as “Hashtag”, Twitter stream, twitter up to 140 characters, and she even said it was ok to tweet during a presentation.  Our time is precious and Tweet chat offers feedback before, during and after a presentation.  Kelly and her helper role played, collected audience tweet chat, flashed friendly power points images on the screen and literally loaded us with great information.  Kelly has a very positive approach toward using what could be a disruptive tool as something helpful and informative for both the presenter and the attendee.  Kelly, you are leading edge!

Following a brief break packed with conversation, we settled back in our seats to hear, “Call the Exterminator ~ I got ANTS!”  Bill Kovach explained that our brains are much like computers with all sorts of information filed away.  Similar to a computer, we have Left and Right drives in the brain.  He introduced us to the Reticular Activation System (RAS) which acts as a spam filter for our thoughts.  The example Bill used was, “I’m going to quite smoking.”  The RAS filter in your brain immediately sends that thought to the spam file.  He then introduced us to ANTS (Automatic Negative Thoughts) which pop out of their files and say, “You are too stressed to quit smoking.”  “You’ll gain weight if you don’t smoke.”  “You need to smoke to relax.” Bill listed several of the nine types of ANTS.  His advice was to talk to these ANTS, to take the power away from these negative thoughts.  It is important to gain control if you are to stop these negative thoughts from controlling you.  Basically, you have to push the delete button on the old programs controlling your life.  This is both a great personal tool and coaching tool.  Good information, Bill

It was wrap-up time for the speeches and on to the General Evaluation of the meeting, led by GE Claudia Brogan.  Rui Li handled the digital recordings for the evening.  Mark Parham reported that one speaker had exceeded their requested time.  Steve Cohn did a thorough job as grammarian.  Claudia summarized the meeting as full of excellent interaction and a bounty of good vibes.  Folks who had made the effort to attend Speakers Roundtable this evening had found their efforts well rewarded.

President Bill Kovach asked our guests to comment on the meeting.  All 13 of them praised the camaraderie and friendliness of the members, the in-depth evaluations, the knowledge gained, and the business-like conduct of the meeting.  A special thanks to guest Oscar Hofer and the favorable press he gives our club.  He brought two guests to the meeting tonight.  Thanks, Keith, thanks, speakers, thanks Claudia, thanks evaluation team. There’ll be no ANTS (Automatic Negative Thoughts) about this meeting!