Longtime member Bruce Pockey delivers an Icebreaker, the introductory speech which is the first speech every Toastmaster gives — and one that’s worth returning to because introducing ourselves to the world is something we do all the time.
Video: “Building a Team” speech by Diane Diamantis
“Laura and the Healthcare Dilemma” – video of a speech by Dr. Andrew Bern
Since Andrew Bern joined Toastmasters at Club Awesome in 2010, he has been a Club President, VP of Education, Area Director, Division Director and this year Club Growth Director for South Florida and The Bahamas. This speech draws on his decades of experience as an emergency room physician. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Dr. Bern (usually just “Andy” in our club) used this speech for a Storytelling project in the Toastmasters educational program based on the idea that one of the best ways to make a point or deliver a message is to make your speech revolve around a specific, human story. This speech is a great example of that principle in action.
Dr. Janice Brooks: Winning from Within – The War with Depression and Anxiety
Dr. Janice Brooks is a People Builder, building lives through her counseling, speaking, coaching and training. Her goal is to inspire and motivate, and to see lives transformed for a Purpose.
Dr. Brooks is a Doctor of Counseling, Author, Certified Temperament Counselor, Licensed Clinical Pastoral Counselor, Speaker, Coach and Trainer, as welll as a Banker. She is a current Member of the John Maxwell Team – Speaker, Trainer and Coach, facilitating Lunch and Learn and Mastermind Groups sessions.
Author of the book Anchored by Purpose; Leader at Purpose Coach and Counseling, a coaching and counseling service dedicated to providing value and helping persons find and live with purpose; located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
How We Created Our Member Testimonial Video
From time to time, as part of a Table Topics session, we ask members to talk briefly about their experience with Club Awesome. We then pull out the best bits (and edit out all the ums and ahs) to create a couple of minutes of total video introducing prospective members to our club.
Highlights from Facebook Live @ Club Awesome Toastmasters, May 3, 2019
Here’s a peek at the learning, laughter and applause you can expect when you visit Club Awesome Toastmasters in Coral Springs. We broadcast live from our meeting on May 3, featuring an introduction of members, Table Topics impromptu speaking practice, and a featured speech on using online video in your marketing by Madalina Iordache of Bright Pink Agency.
This version of the replay has been edited to highlight the best moments from our meeting.
Here’s Madalina’s presentation as a separate video: Video Marketing for 2019 & Beyond
Let’s GO BIG on Facebook Live, May 3
We’ve done a few experiments with Facebook Live broadcasts from the club before, but on May 3 we’re going to GO BIG — that means trying to attract the biggest live audience, the most likes and shares, and lots of replay views of the video. Ultimately, we want that online activity to translate into new visitors to our club.
To make that happen, I’ve created a scheduled event that will go live Friday at 7 am from our Facebook page. The placeholder post for that event is here:
Please Like, Share, and also click the “Get Reminder” button to make it easier to tune in for the live event. Share it now and again later in the week. If you’re in the room on Friday, we’ll ask you to take a moment to pull out your phone and share the video feed with your friends. If you can’t join us in person Friday, you can still help us spread the word and make this a bigger event.
If you are uncomfortable being part of the live video for any reason, you can just watch — but I hope most of you will find this to be a fun way of sharing what we enjoy about this club with a wider audience. I’m promoting it as a way for people to get a glimpse of the learning, laughter and applause we share every Friday. Guests should be reassured that they are invited to participate but do not have to.
To maximize the opportunity, we will tweak our agenda slightly to make this “good TV”:
- Sgt. at Arms should recognize the Facebook Live audience during the meeting opening.
- Whoever does the invocation should be prepared to do it without reading off their phone or a piece of paper.
- As President, I will explain what we’re doing and why. Give a little spiel about the meaning and value of the club.
- For self introductions, members will be called up to the front of the room. We will not be doing introductions of roles separately, so if you have a role, explain it during this time. Try to do it in an entertaining way, if possible.
- Example: Good morning, Toastmasters of Club Awesome, welcome guests and whoever is watching on Facebook. My name is John Smith, and I love this club because of X, Y, and Z. Today, I am also the Ah Counter, which means I will be keeping track of what comes out of people’s mouths when they don’t know what to say.
- Toastmaster of the Day will be the last person to be introduced and will take over the meeting at that point. TOD gets to make their own speech about the great meeting they have organized, then we go straight to …
- Table Topics – keep it lively. Members who do not want to participate in TT via Facebook Live should let the topics master know in advance.
- Humorist – make it count.
- Speech by Madalina on video marketing.
- Toastmaster of the Day thanks everyone who participated and thanks the Facebook Live audience for joining.
- Broadcast ends. We have our 5-minute break.
- VPE Minute and any other business can wait until the end of the meeting.
This is an experiment, which I hope we can use as a worthwhile club marketing and recruiting tool. If it works, maybe we’ll try it again in a month or so. Meanwhile, let’s just try to have fun with it.
2019 Impromptu Speaking Contest Winners
Congratulations Deborah Pinnock, Bhagawati P Parmar, and Bruce Pockey for winning our club’s Table Topic impromptu speaking contest.
This contest tests the ability to respond to a question or prompt not of the speaker’s choosing. Contestants were led into the room one at a time and presented with a simple prompt: “To Be.” Here’s what they did with it.
Impromptu speaking is one of the most valuable skills we practice in Toastmasters, useful in countless real life situations where the ability to “think on your feet” is important.
Club Awesome’s weekly meetings almost always feature a more informal Table Topics contest.
Video Editing for Speakers: Create, Trim & Share
A lot of the editing you might want to do with the video of a speech is possible with free tools like Windows Photos / Windows Video Editor, Google Photos, or Apple’s iMovie.
I’m telling the story of how to do it in two videos, one of my speech about video editing at Club Awesome, and a second video that my friend Chris Guld of GeeksOnTour.com is allowing me to share for Toastmasters educational purposes. If you’re interested in digital photo editing and other topics of particular interest to travelers, I recommend that you subscribe to her complete library of video tutorials.
I frankly wasn’t aware that there was a video editor in Windows 10 until I saw Chris’s tutorial, but now that I know about it I plan to use it for a lot of simple speech editing tasks. Because I wanted to do some fancier editing of the recording of my own speech, splicing in images of the slides I used, I created the video below using a commercial tool, Camtasia. I probably also could have done it in Apple’s iMovie. Both of those allow you to edit multiple tracks of audio and video.
As you will see in the tutorial, the Windows video editor uses a simpler “storyboard” metaphor — but does a good job of allowing you to accomplish basic video trimming, cutting and splicing tasks. You can also add titles and even 3D effects.
More than promoting any one tool, I hope to communicate the basic principles and get you thinking about the possibilities.
First, here’s my speech video to set up the topic.
I shared the video below in the middle of that speech, so you’re getting the replay slightly out of order. This will make the “how to” of video editing a lot clearer.
Chris Guld’s tutorial isn’t specifically about editing a speech video — her example is a video of a dance party — but she does a great job of showing how to edit the timeline of a video to remove any unwanted bits at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle. That includes removing errors, like in her case the moment where someone walked in front of the camera while she was recording.
Chris discusses the video editor as a feature of Windows Photos, and I subsequently found another tutorial on the “hidden” video editor in Windows 10. If you have the current update to Windows 10, Microsoft added a “Video Editor” app — which appears to be just a shortcut for accessing the same tools in Windows Photos.
Another way you could use this tool is to combine clips from several videos — either the best moments or the bloopers — into a single video. Or you might use a clip from a video of a live speech as the introduction to a subject, followed by an explanation of the details produced using PowerPoint’s recording feature.
Now go forth, create, trim, and share!
Create Simple Videos with Nothing but PowerPoint
Did you know that you can create simple videos with nothing but PowerPoint?
The recording feature lets you advance through your slides while adding narration. Optionally, you can toggle on your webcam (your face will appear in the bottom corner of the image). You can then export from PowerPoint to a standard MP4 video file.
For many purposes where you want to deliver a message on video, powered by your voice and a few well-chosen images, this might be all you need to create something that’s sharable on YouTube or social media.
Or you can use this as a way of producing a video clip to be edited and combined with other clips into more elaborate productions.
Here’s a demo