Time’s Up

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

In the old days of variety shows, they gave you the hook.

At the Oscars, they cue the get-off-the-stage music—and then if you keep going they cut the power to your mike.

At VanCore, longwinded speakers are “clapped down” if they go beyond their allotted time. It seems gentle, and it is. But if you’re the one at the podium, ramping up for your big finish, it can feel like being tasered.

There’s really no excuse for being taken totally by surprise when the end comes. At our club, a great big stoplight sits in the middle of the table. You can clearly see it turn from green to amber to red. Those speakers who blow right through the cautions, let’s just say we don’t want to be a pedestrian when they’re driving.

Nevertheless, that’s exactly what happened to Bruce this week. He had crafted his speech with a big O. Henry twist at the midway point. Sadly, he’d miscalculated how long it would take to get to the point where things got interesting. It took all of his seven minutes. He set the table, then the busboy cleared the dishes.

Time management is a big part of public speaking, though it’s often underappreciated. Much is made of the carpentry of our presentations, the polish of our delivery. And these things are important. But it doesn’t matter if your speech is building to a supernova close the likes the world has never seen – if you screw up the timing, nobody’s going to hear it.

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Toast of the Club

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

The “toast” is becoming a lost skill, almost a relic from another era, like the battle’s-eve speech to the troops or a sales pitch for gaslight. Toasts are still part of Toastmasters, of course — we’d have to change our name if they weren’t — but modern toasts tend to be of a type. You toast the bride or the friend who’s turning 40 or the guy who invited you to the party. People you know and owe, in other words.

So it was doubly refreshing to hear Hans go wider and deeper with his toast this week. Hans is VanCore’s newest member, sworn in after a unanimous vote, and he wasted no time testing his chops.

Who knows what a whistleblower is? Hans wanted to know. Not the referee or the train-engineer type, but the conscientious informer.

The term was coined by activist and consumer-advocate Ralph Nader in the early 1970s. These are the folks who, from their privileged position as insiders, divulge secrets that the public has the right to know. Think of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange or, more recently, Edward Snowden and private Bradley Manning, fronting classified U.S. Army info.

“People have mixed emotions about whistleblowers,” Hans said. From one angle they are just loose cannons recklessly telling tales out of school to get attention. But from another they are essential cogs in a democracy. And brave, to boot. They put their careers or even lives at risk.

“Think about what whistleblowers have done to improve the world,” Hans said. They ended the Vietnam War earlier than it otherwise would have, saving countless lives. Brought down Nixon. Exposed the corruption in the Salt Lake City Olympic bids and Quebec politicians’ dirty ties to the construction industry. Blew the lid off of Milli Vanilli. (Actually, Hans didn’t mention that one.)

“Chances are your employer has Whistleblower legislation in place, as required by law now,” Hans said, holding eye contact with people around the room. He was on a roll. He seemed almost personally invested in the subject. You got the impression he was preparing to rat out someone at work.

It’s members like Hans that keep a club like VanCore vital. And traditions like the toast that, as a culture, keep us from sliding back to naked savagery.

So please join us in raising your glass. “To Hans.”

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End of joke: laugh here

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

We all appreciate people who can reliably bring the funny. Most of us can bring the funny ourselves, occasionally.

But humour is like a bird in the wild. It sings when it thinks it’s alone. When it knows it’s being watched, when it senses a performance is expected of it, it clams up.

The easiest way to kill an otherwise funny newspaper column is to run it under the section head “Humour.” Or worse: “The Rib Tickler,” or some such.

“Hey Uncle George, do that funny thing with your ears!” my sisters and I would often say when the poor man visited, grabbing him by the lapels of his ill-fitting suit. “Oh, I don’t do that any more,” he’d say — proceeding, then, of course, to do it. (He could wiggle his ears. Don’t ask me how.) George just needed to ratchet down the pressure.

Professional nightclub comedians must have the cojones of Navy Seals as they get up and face a paying crowd sitting with their arms crossed, like: ‘make me friggen’ laugh.’

Fortunately, Toastmasters isn’t like that. It’s a supportive environment. Everyone wants you to be successful, they want you to be funny, they’re primed to guffaw at anything issuing from your mouth that’s even remotely amusing.

But even at that, “humorous speech” contests are among the most daunting gig in the TM arsenal. So each of the participants in this week’s VanCore’s humorous speech contest deserved medals for bravery.

The early money was on Niki for her speech about a Thanksgiving turkey that put up a fight. But she unfortunately went beyond her allotted time and was dq’d. (The TM clock is a cruel mistress.)

In the Table Topics portion of the contest, contestants Lorne, Patrick, Niki, Angela and Mary Lou tackled the question: “If you could change one thing about Vancouver, what would it be?”

Four outside judges — three from the Declarations club and one from Earth Aware – as well as our own head judge Connie declared Angela the winner.

In theory, Angela now moves on to represent Vancore in the Area contest next week. But since Angela can’t make it, Niki will appear in her stead — possibly going another round with that turkey.

The Area Contest takes place Oct 1, 7pm, at the Roundhouse.

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Senses Working Overtime

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

Angela was wearing big groovy sunglasses as she stepped up to run Table Topics this week. Turns out this was more function than fashion: she was recovering from eye surgery. “It’s amazing how when you take away vision your other senses are heightened,” she said.

Indeed, this was Angela’s theme: the five senses. Thinking may get all the glory but in terms of the quality of our lives, sensing drives the bus. Discuss.

Hans got “sight,” which made him remember a recent eye test for colorblindness. The verdict: it’s a good thing Hans doesn’t work in a Smarties factory. He failed the test. Or rather, he passed with flying colors, if colorblindness was what was being tested.

Deborah got the sense of smell. She delivered a tidy two minutes on how taste and smell go together. They are like Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Each could have a passable solo career without the other, but they couldn’t fill Central Park.

Susan talked about the Won Ton soup she had at lunch – a taste almost still in her mouth. (Today’s Won Ton soup is never more than one good deep burp away.)

Borzo paused for a moment before his soliloquy on “hearing.” If you listened carefully, you could hear the hard drive in his brain spin. He recalled a time, not long ago, when he and his wife were trying to “sleep-train” the baby, using the Ferber method (a.k.a. “Let ‘Em Cry.”) If you think letting your child wail in the night is easy, you haven’t tried it. It’s a sound that evokes sympathy and guilt and a million complicated emotions in between. Borzo conked out in the middle of the jag. When he woke up his wife was there, looking as if she’d been pulled through a knothole backwards. She had endured 45 minutes of wailing. “At that moment, I discovered the difference between mothers and fathers,” Borzo said.

Lorne, who is in the printing business, aptly got “touch.” Before he got kicked up stairs to management, one of Lorne’s jobs was to fix printing machines when they broke down. For tricky manual dexterity demands, printing machines are up there with barbecues and cars. You’ve got to get your arms into tight places and navigate by feel. You’re working in the dark, sometimes literally. You close your eyes and visualize the part of the machine you need to engage with. “It amazes me how sensitive the human hand is,” Lorne said. “My thumb can roll over a screw and tell you if it’s a Phillips or a Robertson.”

Incoming District Governor Arjun Sumal, who was visiting us, mostly chose to watch and observe from the back. At the end he got up and said some nice things about our club.

We were touched.

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“Moments Of Truth”

Posted on September 8, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

Announcement

Please note that the Vancore Toastmaster’s meeting held on Sept. 11th will be devoted to a Moments of Truth session and will not be a typical meeting, for those looking to attend as guests.

What is Moments of Truth?

It is an annual event by all Toastmaster clubs across the world where each club member has an opportunity to share their perspective on belonging to a particular club in their region.

Moments of Truth is an information sharing session used to maintain standards and further meet the needs of the membership.  VanCore will invite all members that attend on Sept 11th to voice their opinion and feedback.

As usual, visitors are more than welcome.

Sept 18 will be a typical Toastmaster meeting and on Sept 25th,  we will hold an exciting speech contest.   This is an invaluable opportunity to see some great speeches by contestants that have signed up for the event.

Good luck to all those who participate!

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Live from Maple Ridge, it’s Lorne

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

Lorne, Vancore’s new secretary, once got a tweet from Steve Martin — that Steve Martin. Lorne was chuffed, until he realized there had been a mistake. The comedian thought he was tweeting Lorne Michaels.

You could say this was the universe trying to make an introduction. Because Lorne’s dry, observational humour would fit right in in the Saturday Night Live writer’s room.

We saw it this week as Lorne delivered speech #5 from the Competent Communicator’s Manual. “It’s All About the Journey,” he called his speech, which described the phases of his daily commute into the city from his home in Maple Ridge. That’s no more than about 40 kilometres as the crow flies, but it might as well be a million miles; it’s one planet to another, with re-entry burns on both ends.

You see, Maple Ridge is . . .  put it this way: it’s still legal to ride a horse through the streets there. Lorne’s wife raises chickens, for which Lorne’s enthusiasm is muted. They’re being raised for the eggs, but the day Lorne gets bitten by one is the day they end up on the dinner plate, he threatens.

On the platform for train to Vancouver Lorne sees the same faces. There’s a group of accountants that huddles up in the same spot. They seem to have come through the same training program, and even are similarly accessorized. “I guess when you graduate, they give you a lunch bag,” Lorne says. The 5:44am crowd is a subculture unto itself. People stand exactly in the places the doors will be when the train stops, like actors hitting their marks.

At Waterfront station the commuters disgorge and move en masse, like cattle to the milking shed, up the escalators and out, past the guy playing the pan flute and the pandhandler who asks for a weirdly specific amount – fourteen dollars. Out on the street the tourists are out, even at that hour. They’re not hard to miss, standing on the corners, holding maps outside down. For some reason, when they are overcome by confusion, they always look up to the sky.

Lorne is a man who moves through life with his eyes and ears open and his mouth closed – except on Wednesday afternoons, when he shares his dispatches from the world we thought we knew.

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“Why Are You Here?”

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

It all started with tears – a meltdown by Niki’s young child that led to temporary chaos, a forgotten briefcase, and a forced last-minute change to the regularly scheduled programming. The result was that Niki showed up to this week’s meeting without her prepared Table Topics questions.

Sometimes mishaps are meant to be. Because what Niki deployed as a backup was one simple question that spoke to everyone. The question was this:

“Why are you here?”

It was a question with more layers than Mom’s lasagna. In invited beetle-browed, existential pondering, or just basic factual accounting.

The cool thing was, as much scope as there was for a wide variety of answers, a common theme emerged. Essentially, everybody who shuffled to the lectern to tackle it said this:

I’m here because I realized my fear of public speaking is preventing me from doing what I want to do in life.

A few years ago, Nick was asked to emcee a friend’s wedding. He had a full year to prepare – which is to say, a full year to marinate in his own fear. “It was the worst year of my life. I allowed it to be the worst year of my life,” he said. But Nick didn’t want to be the kind of person who is incapacitated by anxiety over something that’s really not so scary once you face it, and wrestle it to ground by practicing and practicing. That’s why he’s here.

Adam works in sales. His fear of speaking in front of groups is, he reckoned, a potential career-derailer, because customers can smell fear, and it doesn’t inspire them to open their wallets. Fear prevents a salesman’s message — anybody’s message — from coming from the heart. That’s why he’s here.

Joline just got accepted into pre-med at UBC. She is very shy. To her credit, she realized that great marks will only take her so far. Medicine is a helping profession; it is partly about connection and communicating. If you can’t speak up during Grand Rounds, you’re going to crash out of med school, simple as that. That’s why she’s here.

Fear of public speaking holds so many of us back from being who we need to be. Yet the fix is so simple. Come to Toastmasters – if not this club, then some club at least, one that fits and feels right. Seize every opportunity for “stage time” in this safe, supportive setting.

This is how the dragon is slayed. This is how you live the life you want.

Believe it.

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Guts. Glory. Nick.

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

“Who here has seen the film Anchorman?” asked Nick from the podium.

A few nods of ascent, one muttered affirmation of “Classic!” from Lorne.

“So, for those who haven’t, Will Ferrell jumps in to a bear pit to sort out some trouble there. And suddenly he’s eye to eye with this grizzly bear and the first words out of his mouth are: ‘I immediately regret this decision.’

“Well, that’s kind of what I was thinking when I put my hand up to give this speech.”

It’s an act of bravery to volunteer for an “impromptu” speech. But that very sense of crazy courage, that overriding of the body’s alarm bells screaming ‘Don’t raise your hand!” often give impromptu speeches a charge that makes them great.

Nick’s speech this week was: funny, personal, moving. It was about his difficult search for a career-track job here in Canada, having made the leap from his native Ireland. But really, it was about his search for himself.

We heard hilarious tales of woe from Nick’s job history, including working for a Russian ex-military man who methodically fired everyone around him (Nick hung in there longer than most). Another corporate job was not much better but he so liked the people he was working with that he stayed there far too long. He burned up his twenties in this way, and now the screws are tighter.

Finding his “calling” in Vancouver has proven way tougher than he thought. The main problem is knowing quite what he’s looking for, quite what he was put her to do. “Every day I change my mind.” He is hungry and driven, but the perfect fit for his talents has proved elusive.

The speech was a showcase of Nick’s charm and honesty. It was a sales job, in a sense, for himself. And before stepping away from the podium he made a more explicit petition:

“If anyone knows of any good job opportunities,” please tell me.”

“That,” said chairman Niki, as she “was a brilliant bit of killing two birds with one stone.” An inspiring speech and a help-wanted ad, all in one.

Was the right employer in the VanCore audience that day? Or the friend-of-the-friend of the employer who eventually helps Nick realize his dreams?

We’ll find out.

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When Opportunity Knocks…

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

At busy Toastmaster Clubs like VanCore, the speaking roster often fills up quickly. You snooze, you lose. But that doesn’t mean spaces don’t sometimes open up at the last minute. It’s like getting a call back from the restaurant French Laundry – which normally takes bookings three months in advance – that there’s a table open tonight. What do you do? You grab it.

This week two speeches fell through when the scheduled presenters’ plans changed – which meant opened the door for other members.

Lorne slipped into the breach and delivered Project 2 in his Competent Communicator manual, Organize Your Speech, on a subject dear to his heart, the Printing Industry.

John took advantage of the second gap to deliver an impromptu speech on personal safety and security. He even, in the brief prelude to speaking, hatched a great title: ‘Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail.”

New member Nicky Cullen wasn’t pinch-hitting for anybody – he was the scheduled Table Topics Master – but he nonetheless brought a freshness to the role, possibly because it was his first time doing it. He provided a key word to each participant to inspire a speech.

And of course, everyone he called on stepped up.

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Meet Your Executive

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Vancore Toastmasters

IMG-20130619-00349As this week’s meeting wound up and another VanCore election was in the books, our fearless new leader Katherine (Kate) Hallanzy announced she was heading over to Murchie’s for tea and who would like to join her?

“Looks like the new president will bring a strong social component to the role,” Cory, the chair, noted wryly.

Kate, who speaks softly but commands much respect within the club, was a popular choice to helm the whole shebang into 2014.

“VanCore’s going great guns now,” she noted, and promised to keep the momentum going with the help of a strong executive that’s a mix of veterans — including two past presidents — and new blood.

Out-going president Connie handed over the keys to Kate with no apparent misgivings. She may even have looked a little relieved. (Driving is fun but kind of exhausting.) Victor likewise seemed pleased to be passing on the treasurer’s job – not the breezy gig he’d been led to believe — to Borzo.

To everybody’s relief, Loa, queen of all social media, will handle VP Public Relations.

Lorne Havisto will keep the trains running on time.

Niki Sarshar will woo new members and placate the current ones.

Renee was rightly recognized for the ton of energy and new ideas she brought to the club’s executive this past year.

Here is your new VanCore leadership team. Please hold your applause till the end.

President: Kate Hallanzy

VP of Education: Connie Hubbs

VP Membership: Niki Sarshar

VP Public Relations: Loa Fridfinnson

Treasurer: Borzo Salehi

Secretary: Lorne Havisto

Sergeant-at-Arms: Jonathan Buchanan

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