Sandy Springs Toastmasters 9/21/17 Mtg Recap

President, Anastasia Pass, proudly opened the meeting with the tradition of saying the Pledge of Allegiance.  She then encouraged all members to renew their memberships no later than 9/30/17 and reminded all about our once a month get together scheduled for 9/21, 6:30 at Marlowe's Tavern, Sandy Springs.  The big announcement was that member, Paige Kerr, won the last round of the Humorous Speech Contest and will represent our club at the District 44 Fall Conference on November 18, Marriott on Windward Parkway.  Paige told everyone about her experience in giving her "Cup of Crazy" speech and how she'd love to have the support of all members at the next round.  Go to Toastmasters International for more info on the conference or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/district-44-toastmasters-ignite-fall-conference-tickets-36045820018 to purchase a $30 ticket to attend just the humorous speech contest.  Applause, applause, Paige!!!!  We're rooting for you!!!

The meeting was then turned over to TM, Darbie Saunders. Jeremiah Jones presented niggle as our Word of the Day/Week.  Chris Ashkouti had us chuckling with his 2 corny jokes and then volunteered to lead the impromptu Table Topics session from a bag of a random set of questions the club reserves for last minute plans.  Alan Magee won Best Table Topics for his response to "if you were completely blind but one hour each month you could see, how would you spend that time?  Alan said he could wax eloquent about seeing family and friends but that he would probably be more selfish and watch as many episodes as he could in that hour of Games of Thrones!

Anastasia presented a talk from the Better Speaker Series which all offer instructions on basic speaking skills.  Her talk, vs speech, was on Using Body Language, including all 3 categories - Facial Expressions/Eye Contact, Gestures (all 3 types) and Whole Body Movement.  Evaluations were voluntarily given by several members.  Other members said that they really enjoyed the group evaluation concept and would like to be able to request a group eval sometimes versus one evaluator.  

Many thanks to all of the members for fulfilling roles or volunteering to fill in.  Our group is so inspiring because everyone happily takes ownership of the club's overall success.