Montgomery County Club hosts Successful TOASTMASTERS WEEK Open House in Hillsboro, IL

Nov. 19, 2011 - PRLog -- The Montgomery County Toastmasters Club of Hillsboro, IL met at the Challacombe house on Tuesday evening November 15, 2011 for their penultimate meeting of 2011.  It was a special "Open House", in conjunction with District 8 "Toastmasters Week".  Sixteen club members were present, as were ten guests.  The club also made plans to hold a special Club Christmas Party at the December 6th meeting, while cancelling the normally scheduled December 20th meeting due to it's proximity to the holidays.  

Immediate Past President Bill Guthrie served as the evening's 'Toastmaster' or Master of Ceremonies.  There was a special format for this meeting.  Two veteran members of the club gave brief 3-minute speeches about "Why I Love Toastmasters".  First up was Martha Ruppert followed by Brenda Masters-Stout.  

Then long-time Toastmasters International member Todd Austin from Virden gave a prepared 9-minute presentation called "My Recent Batty Weekend".  Austin, as his alter ego, "The Bat Doctor", spoke about a trip he took last month to meet up with his bat conservation and bat photography mentor of 21 years, Dr. Merlin Tuttle.  Dr. Austin also discussed other happenings of importance that took place at the recent Bat Conservation International White Nose Syndrome Research Symposium at the Field Museum in Chicago.  For more information about Dr. Austin's bat presentations, please go to:  http://www.TheBatDoctor.net  

Following the speeches, their was a 10-minute refreshment break for guests and members to mingle, as well as to get answers to Toastmasters-related questions.

Jamie Powers, one of our club's newest members, was in charge of the impromptu speaking part of the program which is called "Table Topics".  Even though this was Jamie's first time as Tabletopicmaster, she did an outstanding job.  Each of 5 club members chosen had 2 minutes to speak on a topic question that related to recent technological advancements.   Martha Ruppert served as the speech evaluator for Austin's speech, which was the "Vocal Variety" project from the Toastmasters Basic Communication manual.

The Montgomery County Toastmasters Club will next meet on Tuesday, 12-6-11.  Once again, they'll meet at the Challlacombe House in Hillsboro from 7 PM to 8 P.M.. Guests are always welcome and encouraged to attend.  


Photo caption: The three prepared speakers at the Montgomery County Toastmasters Open House meeting on 11-15-11 were (from left): Brenda Masters-Stout; Dr. Todd Austin a.k.a. "The Bat Doctor" and Martha Ruppert.

For more info, check out the Montgomery County Toastmasters Club website at: http://www.MontgomeryCountyToastmasters.org

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The Montgomery County Toastmasters Club meets twice each month at the Challacombe House in Hillsboro, IL from 7 to 8 PM on the 1st & 3rd Tuesdays. If you live in the area and would like to fine tune your communication & leadership skills, we can help!