MeetingMinutes

Minutes Happy Christmas!!! Tonight's meeting was the last one in 2019 and Christmas special! Members were asked to wear something red and bring a present. At the beginning of the meeting, we exchanged our presents. Presents varied a lot, from the typical ones to unique ones. In the Table Topic Session, KT asked questions reflecting 2019, such as a word of this year or some sad news. Members were asked to give their opinion to questions like "What is a solution to prevent a traffic accident caused by elderlies." Some questions were very difficult, but interesting and meaningful to reflect this [...]

What is Pathways? Hello everyone, this is Y.T, President of Visionaries TMC. I have introduced the basic procedure of Toastmasters meetings in the previous article. There, I have used a word "Pathways". This is an education program offered by Toastmasters International, which all members follow. It contains plenty of practical contents, but it is pretty difficult to understand, especially for beginners. So, I would like to introduce what Pathways is! Pathways has 11 paths. Each path has different competencies, so each member is advised to choose the most suitable path before he/she starts the education. The list of paths is as [...]

What are Toastmasters activities? Hello everyone, this is Y.T, President of Visionaries TMC. I have introduced what Toastmasters is in the previous post. As written in the post, Toastmasters is an organisation which aims to develop public speaking skills and leadership. Then, through what kind of activities do members develop those skills? Today, I would like to introduce Toastmasters main activity, club meeting. Club meetings are usually held twice a month, two hours each. Meeting venue and schedules differs from club to club. We, Visionaries, usually hold meetings on the first and the third Saturday, from 18 pm at Musashikosugi. Each [...]

Minutes Usually, Toastmasters meeting proceeds only with members and guests. However, tonight, we got a guest speaker from other club, Yokohama-Hiyoshi TMC! It was an exciting night to hear other club members speech, needless to say, our members speeches as well! In the Table Topic Session, TA gave a very unique questions. They were based on his experience during world travel, but he required "creative" questions. As I'm not a creative person, I was relieved that I was not assigned as a speaker... Not only hearing members answers, but also TM TA's unique experiences was fun for me. In the Prepared [...]

What is Toastmasters? Hello everyone, this is Y.T, President of Visionaries TMC. I have been a member of this club, or Toastmasters, for three years. I really enjoy our activities and would recommend many people to start Toastmasters journey. However, as soon as I introduce Toastmasters to my friends or colleagues, any people just say, "What the hell is Toastmasters...?" So, today, I'd like to introduce what Toastmasters is. Toastmasters International websites says about itself as the follows: “Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. Headquartered in Englewood, [...]

Minutes Tonight's meeting was the first one after the huge typhoon hit Kanto area on 12th Oct. Everyone was relieved to see each other without any injuries. We realised that gathering twice a month regularly is a very precious thing. Considering such a situation, meeting topics were pretty much linked with "disaster" or "risk management". In the Table Topics Session, MU asked some questions about disaster, such as "Have you prepared anything for the typhoon?" or "What will you bring with you to the evacuation spot?" Only one week after the typhoon and being disaster-conscious, each member shared [...]

Minutes Tonight we were supposed to have a presentation by a Toastmaster from another club who had set up an in-house club within a multinational company. Unfortunately she could not make it anymore so we quickly had to come up with additional things to fill the agenda. First of all, during the opening session our president conducted an activity to learn about TMC's mentorship program. We actually did not know the difference between mentoring and coaching well so the president wanted to share that with members. Tonight's TMoE was SS who conducted the meeting smoothly. Kudos to him [...]

Minutes We had our final meeting in Heisei! I hope everybody had a good time. At first our president introduced the list of 100 people who were considered most influential by the TIME magazine. If you want to know more about them, please check the following link out; http://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2019/ TMoE was MU who was a first timer who did a wonderful facilitation. She made nice comments after each speaker. Table topics master was EI. Not only did she ask questions she also shared some events which took place during the course of Heisei such as the introduction of [...]

Minutes A new fiscal/academic year started in Japan and many of us had a fresh start, too. Some members left the club because of changes in their personal lives but for the first time in about a year KT visited our club. He just missed a payment but will be reinstated as a member very soon. We also welcomed a new member, HW who we are sure will give many great speeches going forward. Our president wanted to pay respect to a very old activity of VTMC called good and new so decided to do it for the [...]

Minutes We had a nice cozy meeting. The number of attendees was small. There were only 11 of us. Still we leverage the small turnout to our advantage. Our president decided to interview HK as she represented our club at the area contest the other day. It was fun to ask her questions and hear her answers. TMoE was YT, our dedicated VPE. The word of the evening was sharp and indeed he facilitated the meeting in a sharp fashion. The table topics master was SK who asked many seasonal questions such as 'What is the most memorable graduation you have [...]