Dear friends and members,

Please note that our club will be taking a break during the Holiday season.

We will resume our regular weekly meetings starting Tuesday January 10, 2012.

Happy Holiday Season, and looking forward to seeing you in the new year!

Chers membres et amis,

Veuillez noter que nous sommes présentement en relâche pour nous permettre de profiter au maximum du temps des Fêtes.

Nous reprendrons nos activités hebdomadaires régulières dès le mardi 10 janvier 2012.

Joyeuses Fêtes et au plaisir de vous voir à la nouvelle année!

Vous cherchez à améliorer votre discours en public? Venez nous rencontrer pour voir comment St-Lawrence Toastmasters Montréal peut vous aider.

Voici le programme Toastmasters de la soirée du 27 septembre 2011.

Félicitations aux gagnants des concours du club St-Lawrence Toastmasters Montréal, qui ont eu lieu la soirée du 21 septembre 2011.

Voici les heureux gagnants des concours français :

Concours de discours humoristique Toastmasters:

1. Mathieu Savage

2. Michel Gadbois

Concours d’évaluations en français Toastmasters :

1. Véronique Sangin-Gagnon

2. Mathieu Savage

Les premiers gagnants iront donc au Concours du secteur 53. Si un premier gagnant ne peut être présent à ce concours, le deuxième gagnant participera alors à sa place.

The English contest winners were :Toastmasters English Humorous Speech Contest:1. Charles Cron

Toastmasters English Evaluations Contest:

1. Nicholas Kepper

2. John Fowler

The first winners will go on to participate in the Area 53 Fall Contest. Should a first winner not be available for the contest, then the second winner can compete instead.

You might be interested to know that the meeting of Sept 20th is a special meeting not like our usual weekly meetings. We will be holding a club contest (i.e. humorous speech contests and evaluation contests).

Although it won’t be in the standard weekly meeting format, it’s still quite interesting to check out. For example, this is how the evaluation contest usually unfolds:

There will be a target speaker (i.e. someone presents a speech, and this person has been selected secretly beforehand to prepare a target speech to give for the purposes of the contest). All of the audience will get to hear and appreciate the speech. The evaluators will all be evaluating the same speech.

Then the contestants (the evaluators) will be asked to leave the room and take a few minutes to prepare their evaluation notes.

The Sergeant-at-Arms then collects all the notes, which will be handed back to each evaluator as he/she comes back into the room to present his evaluation. (The order of evaluation will have been been previously determined by drawing straws.)

The each evaluator has a chance to give an evaluation, making sure to provide constructive feedback to the target speaker and making sure to speak within the allotted time.

Finally, what makes it quite interesting for the audience members is that we get to have a sense of the different evaluation styles and we notice what the evaluators pick out in common as well as any special points that each individual evaluator may have noticed that the other evaluators have not mentioned. Finally, we compare to what we would have said ourselves had we been asked to evaluate the target speaker. This is a great learning experience because it allows us to, in a sort of way, “learn through osmosis”.

Here is the program for the evening of September 20.  Good luck to all the contestants!

Nous aimerions chaleureusement accueillir nos nouveaux membres Mathieu et Ann!

(Photo ci-dessus avec la présidente de notre club, Véronique Sangin-Gagnon.)

Ann était déjà venue nous visiter en juin juste avant que nous prenions notre relâche d’été, et a décidé de revenir nous voir dès la première réunion de septembre.  En tant que nouvelle membre, elle a même déjà eu le courage de donner son premier discours (le brise-glace).

Mathieu était bien motivé après avoir assisté à notre première réunion et ayant été convaincu que Toastmasters était ce qu’il lui fallait pour l’aider dans son cheminement de pouvoir mieux s’exprimer en public et devenir meilleur leader.

Bienvenue à vous deux!

Do you want to improve some of your PowerPoint presentation skills?

A big thanks to Erik Jensen at PowerPoint Blog for mentioning that there will be a series of free webinars for anyone interested in improving their slide design and presentation skills.  We think this can definitely be useful for all Toastmasters.

The webinars will take place throughout September and October 2011.

Here is a brief description of the webinar series:

Learn how to eliminate Death by PowerPoint and make your presentations come to life. Listen to guest experts share their best techniques and answer your questions!

To find out more, please head directly to the PowerPoint Blog where we found out about this ourselves:

Improve your slide design and presentation skills (Free webinars)

The article gives a description of all the presenters and their profiles, the dates of the presentations, as well as how to register for the webinars (once you’re registered, you will receive the links to join each of the webinars).

Dear friends and members,

Yes, our yearly summer break is almost over!  Our club will be back to its regular Toastmasters meeting schedule starting on Tuesday September 6.

We hope you’ve had a chance to enjoy some of the wonderful things Montreal has to offer during the summer, such as the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Montreal International Fireworks Competition, the Just for Laughs Festival, and the Fantasia Film Festival!

We look forward to seeing you in a few weeks.  And until then, to take full advantage of what’s left of this summer, here’s a site with some suggestions of other activities in Montreal: Bonjour Québec’s comprehensive list of upcoming special events in the Montreal area.

In the meantime, here’s an amusing video parody of Kristen Stewart (best known for playing Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga of films). Think of it as The Kristen Stewart Guide to Public Speaking.

See you again in September!

Chers amis et collègues,

La relâche d’été est presque finie, et nous reprendrons nos activités régulières à partir du mardi 6 septembre.

Nous espérons que vous avez pu profiter au maximum des belles activités qui ont eu lieu à Montréal durant l’été, telles que le Festival de Jazz de Montréal, l’International des Feux Loto-Québec, les Francofolies de Montréal, le Festival Juste pour rire.

D’ici notre prochaine rencontre, si vous recherchez encore d’autres activités pour encore profiter de ce qu’il reste de l’été, voici des sites que vous pouvez consulter: le Guide d’évènements Festiv’été du site La Toile du Québec, et le répertoire des festivals et événements à Montréal du site Bonjour Québec.

Au plaisir de vous (re)voir en septembre!