I would like to add my comments to Dirk’s message. I have seen many
evaluations contests and this is one of he most gratifying experiences I have
had. Everyone was involved and even though all the participants are
“short-timers”, all handled themselves as experienced professionals.
Congratulations to all the participants.
On another note, I invite all of the CVTM members to attend the Front Range
Toastmasters humorous speech and evaluation contest this Thursday evening at
7:00 pm till 9 pm. The location is 1851West 84th Avenue, Federal Hgts, CO
80260.
Thanks again for an enjoyable meeting and contest. Now on to the next
adventure.
Ray Pezolt DTM
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 26, 2017, at 10:51 PM, <dirk@xxxxxxxxxxxx> <dirk@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Greetings friends.
First, want to say that the contest tonight made me more proud than I've been
in a long time with respect to Toastmasters. You guys really listened over
the past couple of weeks and it showed tonight.
For those not in attendance for the Evaluation Contest, First Place: Ryan
Rowenhorst, Second Place: Brissa Childers, Third Place; Ben Flaim. I truly
applaud all of you.
We had a guest speaker, Luis Estrada who told us about his family's vacation
in Mexico. Additionally, we had several members from the Front Range club
come in as guest judges for impartiality. I appreciate your contribution.
The E-7 Area contest takes place on 10/7/2017. Ryan has a wedding in Chicago
on this date, so Brissa Childers will compete. Everyone, try to attend this
event as Brissa could really use the support!
Eastern Division - E6/E7 Areas Combined Contest
Evaluation and Humorous Speech Contest
Saturday October 7, 2017 2:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Boulder Public Library, Boulder Creek Room
1001 Arapahoe Ave
Boulder, CO 80302
----------------------------
Meeting Schedule
----------------------------
10/3 10/10 10/17
TM Ben Brissa James
Spkr Boyce Anna Ben
Spkr Annamarie James Ray
GE Dirk Ryan Ryan
Eval Brissa Dirk Anna
Eval Ray Boyce Annamarie
Gram Ryan Annamarie Dirk
TT James Ben Brissa
================================
Last, I want to let you know that to date I've been using Easy-Speak as the
club record keeping system. I have exchanged emails with the owner of
Easy-Speak in England several times and have been using it for a couple of
months. To be truthful, in my opinion, this program really sucks. It's very
poorly designed, sloppily built and takes an inordinate amount of time to do
our scheduling and record keeping. Furthermore, the philosophy I live by
with regard to Toastmasters and the philosophy the owner of Easy-Speak are
incompatible. My view is that the meetings and participation should be the
focus of the club. Part of the Toastmasters experience is learning meeting
planning skills. His philosophy is that Easy-Speak should be the hub of all
communication for the club and, from what I can tell, meetings and personal
interaction should be secondary. Meeting planning would be entirely handled
by Easy-Speak. I simply don't agree.
I then started looking around and could not find a solution to my problem off
the shelf. We used a program called Club Scheduler at Front Range in the
past (we used it for years), which showed how us how it could be done.
Unfortunately this program has been discontinued.
Front Range now uses Easy-Speak, where I got the idea to use this for CVTM.
Honestly, what I'm seeking is an automated scheduling system for rotating the
roles among the membership without constraint. FreeToastHost, which this
club was using prior, does not offer an automated scheduling system. So I'm
electing to use FTH for our history keeping.
For the scheduling portion, I've decided to write an automated scheduling
system myself. It will produce output suitable for emailing the club for the
schedule. Then I'll use FTH for the other work. We'll see how that goes!
Anyway, wanted to let you know of what was going on!
Best, and until next Tuesday!
Dirk Kittredge
Educational Vice-President
Carbon Valley Toastmasters Club
