Minutes of meeting August 21st 2014

The meeting of 21st August at Vox Toastmasters IBM began with Dilip sharing his experiences as a Toastmaster and working with mentors at Toastmaster over the past few years. He spoke about his personal development, about power of writing down concise, achievable and practical goals, and the advantages of taking on new leadership roles. He spoke about how the Vox Toastmasters club had been a constant source of inspiration for him to keep developing himself as a leader in all spheres of life. As Dilip calls it his motto from Toastmasters: "Raising the bar", exploring new challenges as you explore your own untapped potential! 

His speech was followed by Mohan's address as the Toastmaster  for the day as he opened the session by expressing his love for Thursdays as he gets to be a part of fun evening Toastmaster sessions at Vox, IBM. He introduced the humorist of the day Vidya who brought out the advantages of humor in life, use of humor to beat fears and inhibitions and appropriate use of 'the beep' word for cleansing out frustrations. This was followed by a moving speech by Deep about the time around Indira Gandhi's(ex-Prime Minister of India) assassination and the unfair atrocities against the Sikh community. Deep sent chills down the spine as he narrated the details of his personal experiences. He wound up his speech with a call for peace and ability to forgive, as higher traits in building a community. Bhoomaiah expressed his expert evaluation of Deep's speech by calling for enactment rather than narration for delivering a story filled with personal experiences. Deep's speech met all the requirements of the speech manual and his speech was applauded for that.

Isabelle brought back smiles to our faces as she disclosed the table topics of the day. She opened the theme for table topics by narrating her experience of falling into water as a child. We were delighted to welcome 2 new guests XP and Phoebe. XP spoke about a thoroughly wrong day in Vietnam and Phoebe charmed us with her experience as a child where she embarrassed herself by falling into a penny fountain, when she was all dressed up to meet her aunt. Venkat spoke about his experiences on the flight from India to US and how he wondered about a totally new cuisine which included broccoli (uncommon in India), and we had Praveen talk about his experience joining the boarding school for the first time. Phoebe was the undoubted crowd favorite .XP and Phoebe! we  would love to see you back!!!

Vidya was applauded for her job as a general evaluator and she emphasized time and again about avoiding filler words and getting the grammar, pronunciation and sentence structure right. XP and Phoebe expressed their feedback about the club being very organized and friendly to new speakers.

So much for the meeting of August 21st! More excitement with Area contests on humor and evaluation coming up in the next few weeks.

-Vidyangi (Club Secretary, IBM Vox Toastmasters)

PS: I will be uploading more picture shortly.

Minutes of meeting August 14th 2014

(Posted on behalf of Dilip A. K.)

Toastmasters meetings are getting better every week. The Leadership skills of the members are developing at an equal pace as their Communication skills. Each and every member is giving their 100% to ensure they carry out their leadership role successfully: And for the new members the encouragement and support of the fellow members is helping them develop their skills.


This week Preya was the Toastmaster and ensured all roles are filled before the meeting started. Starting on a lighter note, Mohan's joke on techniques of remembering had everyone in splits. Mohan has quickly mastered the skill of delivering the punch line, keeping the audience waiting for it.

In prepared speeches Dilip working on his 'Speeches by Management' manual took on a challenging topic of delivering a low performance rating to a member of his team.

The techniques he learned from the speech guidelines were effectively used by him to provide a specific but sincere delivery of the bad news. He was evaluated by our experienced guest Toastmaster, Nicole who provided suggestions on how to further improve Dilip's speech by highlighting the recipient's positive contributions as well. The tone of the voice, rate of delivery and effective use of pauses were the highlights of Dilip's speech.

Moving into the Table Topics session conducted by Deep, he added humor to the topics with a theme of "Superfluous". 

Shaking some of the foundations of the American culture he required Praveen to justify buying a larger than needed house and Mohan for purchasing a larger than required car. Isabelle justified spending the extra lottery money on traveling and purchasing a large house and a boat. Our guest Toastmaster, Nicole suggested investing our tax money on the younger and the older generations, as we'll need it at a later time as well. Our guest Toyin had a perfect reply to using an extra hour in a day: Watching reality TV and was the best Table Topics speaker of the day.
With Praveen performing the leadership role of the General Evaluator provided valuable suggestions on how to further improve our future meetings. On his team, Isabelle delivered an accurate report of proper usage of the English language and count of the use of the superfluous filler works. Our guest Toastmaster, Judy kept accurate time and provided the winners list for the Awards.

With a thoroughly enjoyable and educational meeting wrapped up Kavitha is the Toastmaster for our next meeting. I'm looking forward to yet another dynamic and fun filled meeting next week.

Posted on behalf of Dilip A K (Club President, Vox Toastmasters Club) by Vidyangi (Club Secretary, Vox Toastmasters Club)

Minutes of meeting August 7th 2014

Its always new! Every one of the Toastmasters meetings and every week! Its new all the time! Every Toastmasters club has a unique flavor, so also the meetings we attend every week. Ask me what was new this at Vox Toastmastes Club, San Jose this week, and here you go.

We had 3 new guests viz., Scott, Salvador and Taylor and they came with new energies, goals and had something new to add to the club. 

Dilip presided over the meeting and declared it open. Mohan was the toastmaster of the day and introduced the word of the day: burgeon. Kudos to all members who made it a point to use the word of the day. Kavitha as always was hinting the usage of the word of the day, she even used printed documents and waved at the speaker signalling the usage of the word of the day! Way to go Kavitha. Mohan also enabled members to introduce their roles viz., Grammarian, Vote Counter, Timer, General Evaluator, Volume monitor and Leadership Evaluator. 

The meeting opened with a joke by Praveen which set the tempo high for all of us. (Pic attached above)

Kavitha was the speaker of the day. She spoke on ways to make Vox Toastmasters club successful. She spoke about making Vox Toastmasters a melting pot of cultural exchange from all over the world. She addressed ways to retain members in the club. For instance: she referred to ways to bring a smile on the member's face, involving new members, enabling older members of the club to guide and mentor the newer members, etc. She endorsed our new member Scott for taking on a role instantly in the first meeting. Well done Kavitha! once again you make it very hard for the evaluators to spot errors in your speech.Kavitha was the speaker of the day. 

We had some great table topics by Dilip, who was the table topics master of the day. We had 6 table topics speakers for the table topics session this time. Table topics sessions are meant to improve our ability to think on our feet and thats what Dilip displayed in his list of table topics. He came up with these topics on the fly. Scott, our new member was again the first to pick a topic and spoke about the way he connected better with nature by diving with sharks, Bhoomaiah spoke about diving into exploration of Bay Area by better means of networking. Salvador spoke about how he would enjoy his job in Disney land as a meet and greet person at the entrance. Vidya spoke about how there are no ways to fail or cherish failures,  and nothing is ever a failure but everything is just an experience. 

Our new member Taylor also ventured on a topic about connecting with the world in better ways using social networking. Salvador and Vidya were the joint winners of the table topics session. 

Thinh was Kavitha's evaluator for the day. He highlighted the clear organization in Kavitha's speech. He also mentioned how the talk would benefit even a wide audience as it talked about polishing the skills of an individual and making him more well rounded. 

We had home made cup cakes, courtesy Kavitha and Aparna.

Thinh was also the best evaluator of the day.

The guests were asked to share their thoughts about the session. Scott talked about how the gibble can be better used in the meetings. Salvador said that the meeting was organized and useful. Taylor had come with an open mind and liked what he received. 

We ended the meeting by greeting little Aparna for her birthday. 

-Club Secretary, Vox Toastmasters IBM

Vidyangi