Darrel tells us about the need for IT security.

Andy captures the moment when Julian confesses that he was supposed to be taking pictures during the meeting and posting them to the website.

More pictures from future meetings are forthcoming- as Julian’s memory allows. 

Christmas Get-Together!

Darrell and his wife were gracious enough to open their wonderful home to Downtown Toastmasters for a Christmas Get-Together. Between the stunning decorations and the yummy food, it proved to be a wonderful night. Merry Christmas!

Weekly winners!

Here are some of the winners at a recent meeting. Jason won best speech. Newcomer Theresa won best Table Topics speech, and Gary won best Evaluator. Toastmaster Edd presents them with their ribbon.

Since today was National Play Doh Day, our theme for the day was Winnie the Pooh, of course. Andy has proof:

Julian gave the speech Evaluate to Motivate from the Successful Club Series. It was our monthly educational speech, but it was also the last speech Julian needed to receive his Advanced Leadership Bronze award. 

Andy presented this award to Julian a few weeks back when Julian gave the Accepting an Award speech from the Special Occasion advanced manual. We used Julian's upcoming ALB award as the award to be presented. Here is a picture of the not-quite-yet-happened event. 

Picture courtesy of history. 

But, now it's official, Julian has his Advanced Leadership Bronze. Congrats Julian!

Banner Wars!

Last week, River Smith's was closed for renovations, so we decided to head over to the Llano Estacado Toastmasters meeting. While we were there, we invoked a little know practice: The Banner Raid. Since we had five downtown guests at their meeting, we stole their club banner. The rule says they can regain the their banner by having five of their members visit our club.

The raid was a success! We brought their banner back to our club and sang songs to our victory! The Llano Estacado banner hung in the halls of Downtown Toastmasters.

For a week.

This week, seven Llano Estacado pirates visited our meeting to reclaim their banner. I was a great meeting and a great bit of fun.

Jason holding the capture banner before handing it over to the Llano pirates. Arrrr!

Photo shamelessly stolen from Llano's site. They took a picture and we did not. It seems they have more photographers than we do. If only each of us Downtowners had a magical device in our pocket which takes pictures and also does a million other things. Someone should get on that ....

Spring 2014 Contests

Donald represented our club at the Area contest for Table Topics. Here he is in action.

He did so well, he placed first in our area! Here is our own Jason - who was Toastmaster for the Area contest - presenting Donald his trophy for first!