The Award for Most Awards goes to....

Meeting, Wednesday 27th June 2012:   The CTI Horror Picture Show...


In attendance: Mahdia, Darlene, Lora, Helen, J.F., David, Geetha, Rosario, Janet, Kim, Simon, Val, Chris

Guests: Kaitlin, Raniel

It was great when it all began...I was a regular CTI fan....

CTI Techtalkers is a special club. And because it is special we have had 7,398 (right Darlene) celebrations and award ceremonies. I think it's because..we like to Party...we like..we like to Party...

So to mark our Toastmasters year end, which is officially 30th June, we had a Pot Luck...yeah...the food kind...not the underground HipHop group.....

This is the kind of gathering where all the team players bring food, and Simon shows up late with none and eats it all anyway.

The meeting itself was more informal, consisting mainly of a masterful Table Topics Session, led by incoming El Presidente Chris Hecker, and then a gigantanormous awards session...

Chris Hecker flanked by his DTM bodyguards

Our topic presenters were:
Kim "Come 'Fly' with me" Beckett; Rosario "Birds in my Belfry" Talevera; Simon "All Jackson's make good babysitters, especially Michael and I" Jackson; Val "Audrey Hepburn Holiday" Erickson; Darlene "I Vant your blood" Davies.

After a fierce contest between our resident weirdos, the winner, and world champion bird lover, was Rosario!

We then moved on to our latest Awards ceremony, hosted ably by David, Mahdia, Val and J.F. and Neil Patrick Harris. Ahem...

The awards were as follows:
Outstanding Toastmasters: Darlene, David, Val, Rosario, Geetha
Most Improved: Mahdia....
Happiest: Lora
Professional Service Award: Helen
Spirit of Success: J.F.
Rising Star: Janet (or Judy, or Jody...heck call her whatever you like...The future is ours so lets plan it.....Dammit!.)
Most Dedicated: Kim
Writer of the Year: Simon
Humorous: Chris
Presidents Choice: David

And then....

Badge Presentations for our Federales....sorry DTM's!

BADGES...we ain't got no...

to follow it all, our DTM's were presented with their badges: Congrats again Rosario, Geetha and...not to be fed till after Midnight...Val....

And Finally: based on rigorous contributions, and official scorecards, we awarded our Rookie of the Year, and our Toastmaster of the Year....

Rookie of the Year 2012: Mahdia Ibrahim

Toastmaster of the Year 2012: Rosario Talavera

Triple Crown winners Geetha and Val: Kneel before us Mortals!*

*Triple Crown awarded for completing 3 separate Toastmasters awards, and not according to rumor, for being a monumental princess.

David: The Presidents right hand!

Helen: Maintaining Order among the Chaos!

Rookie of the year 2012 - Maaaaaaaaahdia....

Club Toastmaster of the year 2012 - Rosario "two times" Talavera

Thank you to all at the club for a great 2012 Toastmasters year.... the road was long but we ran it....Janet....

I'll have more writing for you in the next year....

So please...don't tell me to 'Can it'...Janet....

10 - Years, Speeches, Club - Anniversary

Ten. Ten, Ten Ten, Ten Ten Tennnnnn.


Yes. We turned 10 and had a big feast to celebrate.


In attendance: Many of our core club members (see earlier meeting for a typical list), plus family members, friends and notable Toastmaster Dignitaries: District 42 Governor Chuck LeBlanc (I never did get chance to ask if he was related to Matt); Division J Governor Doris "I get it done" Henn, Lt. Governor Marketing Keith Lee.

District 42 Governor Chuck Le Blanc declares CTI Techtalkers the greatest club in the history of Toastmasters*

 (*not actually what he said but we're sure that's what he meant)

The highlights of the feast were many and included:

DTM's
Plaques awarded to our newest DTM's (Distinguished Toastmasters), Geetha Nicodemus and Roasario Talavera, along with a special mention for Val Erickson who also becomes a DTM at Midnight on July 1st (as soon as her term as Area Governor is up).
This takes our number of DTM's at CTI Techtalkers to 4. By way of understanding how amazing this is, Chuck pointed out that less than 1% of Toastmasters achieve the DTM designation. By my calculations with new member Janet taking us to 22 members, we have 18% of our club with the DTM designation.


I'm willing to bet no other club boasts so many. Congratulations CTI Techtalkers and the ladies in question.

Speech Contest Winner District 42

Darlene "I sweep the board" Davies, was presented with the District 42 trophy for winning the speech contest, taking her to the World Semi-Finals in Orlando. This trophy was so gigantic I suspect we'll need to hire her some porters to carry it around.

(Now that we have 4 DTM's we can finally move the Ark of the Covenant back to it's sacred resting place...)

Darlene receives the world's largest trophy for her district 42 victory 

Paving my own road - Mahdia's 10th Speech

Her 10th Competent Communication Speech, which coincidentally earned CTI Techtalkers the 10th and final point in achieving Presidents Distinguished Club status.
Mahdia raised extreme emotions and applause from the group as she described growing up in Sudan, and having the bravery and confidence not only to leave and pursue her dreams, but to learn to communicate confidently and clearly through Toastmasters.

Pave your own road, then follow it...it can be Yellow, or even "So Yellow"

Our Toastmasters special guests gave speeches, along with our club sponsor Dave McKillop, and former charter member Terry Ross.

We learned about the beauty and power that being a member of this club can bring, and hope for another 10 successful years!

10 years ago in Calgary? Nobody was alive then....

Weds June 20th: An "Illuminati-ng Toastmaster Meeting"

In attendance:
Rob Cardinal: Toastmaster Simon Jackson: Speaker #1; Mahdia Ibrahim  Grammarian and Ah Counter; Darlene Davies, DTM:  Timer; Val Erickson, ACG, ALB: TT Master; Rosario Talavera, DTM: TT Evaluator; Julie Wright, David Zhao, CC:  Speech Evaluator #1;   Kim Beckett: General Evaluator; Chris Hecker CL, Kyle Wilson CC, CL, Helen Eng, Lora Johnston, Geetha Nicodemus, DTM; Josefina Perez, Jodi David, Jean Francois Amiot


GUESTS: Janet (who has now joined us), Vince


Word of the day: (Phrase) Where were you 10 years ago?


Today we celebrated a historic, monumental, stupendous, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious event.

Yes...CTI Techtalkers turned 10.

In case you missed the magnitude of what this means, let me enlighten you. Here's what normally happens in Calgary:

Day 1: Someone proposes idea.
Day 2: Nobody shows up
Day 3-538: People promise to show up but don't
Day 539: Proposer of idea moves back to Ontario.

Or:
Day 1: Structure/Building/Group is created.
Day 1000: Maintenance is needed. Committee votes to disband/ tear down structure and build something new.

As far as I can tell this means the oldest things in Calgary are now: 1) Fort Calgary, 2) CTI Techtalkers

See...we are awesome!

In the spirit of our awesomeness, Toastmaster Rob asked us to share where we all were 10 years ago. A summary of some of these included:

Rob - starting to build asteroid tracking software (as opposed to me, I was busy playing Asteroids on the Atari 2600); Mahdia (aged 14) plotting escape from Sudan in order to become an Astronaut (is anyone getting a space theme today... CTI Techtalkers "We've got the Right Stuff"); Darlene was an Area Governor for Toastmasters and started CTI Techtalkers along with Rosario (who was busy proving she could pass her Oral for her Masters degree in World Peace).

Chris Hecker, Kim Beckett, Val Erickson and David Zhao were busy destroying the death star in a galaxy far far away. No seriously...have you ever seen Princess Leia and Val in the same room?

Jean Francois was in Montreal, being so very very French. Almost as French as Simon, who was living there renovating a house.

And Lora was getting drunk. At least if "partying a lot" means the same thing in Canada as it does in England.
In her defense she was just N-n-n-n-n-Nineteen.

After that we had some topics ala table, in which we got to play with Val's ball.(Add your own comments to that, my mind overloaded).

Our winner, was Kim Beckett, with a poignant tale of how she learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, sorry, how she and her daughter enjoyed a wonderful trip to Hawaii together and formed a great Adult relationship.

Kim's victory reflected her connection to the audience, the emotional depth displayed, and the raw passion she kept just beneath the surface. Well done Kim!

And finally, Simon told a tale about Freemasonry for his 4th speech. Describing its practices and methods, and potentially dispelling several myths in the process. In a stunning tour de force, he completed his speech without using a single bit of humour or comedy, thus baffling all of the club with this extreme deviation of form.

Simon clarifies that the sale of Wayne Gretzky to the LA Kings was not a secret Illuminati plot

Evaluator David appreciated the simplistic sentences, and clear and concise vocab, describing it as "the first time I've completely understood everything you've said" (I'll let my family know David, they've yet to reach that epiphany).

All in all another splendid meeting...here's to another 10 years!

Everybody loves the Bumps!

Weds June 13th: A monster Toastmaster Meeting

In attendance: Everyone in the Universe...no seriously... ok, we had: Kim, Simon, Lora, Lora's sister (Sarah?), Rosario, Mahdia, Rob, Geetha, Chris, Russ, Darlene, Basheer, Gaoming, Josefina, Kyle, Julie, Terry, Marvin, Vaughn, Linda, Boyd, and possibly others but I ran out of fingers and toes.

Word of the day: Mewl - To cry like a baby

After spreading the word that we were giving out free money, we had a huge number of attendees this week. Or it might have been that our very own "World Semi-Final Championship Contender", our Hurricane Force, floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee, Darlene Davies, was speaking.

Our theme for the day could have been cherries, or pastures new, for we had a number of Toastmasters fulfilling roles for the first time. Nothing like a packed house for a true baptism of fire. In for the first time in certain roles we had Kim (Toastmaster), Simon (General Evaluator), and Lora (Table Topics Master).

Several of our guests were old club members returning, but we had some new faces and a few veteran guests like Russ "Which Wig will I wear today" Dantu, who is going to coach Darlene for her role in the upcoming contest.

Kyle "Whose line is it anyway" Wilson, gave us Mewl to begin, and we all took turns crying like babes for him.

Darlene then threw down a new speech, taking on speech 6 in the Competent Communicator Manual (rumour has it for the 7,398th time), which concerns "Vocal Variety".

Her speech "A Bumpy Ride" was about dealing with the mother in law, and the gist I got was, if you wait long enough, eventually they pass away. Ok, I take that back, Darlene related a touching tale, with swings of pitch and excellent comic timing, which showed us that the worst of enemies can become the best of friends, if only we leave the door open just a crack.

Personally I think she was giving Lora a hint, since our dear Table Topics Mistress is getting married this Saturday... CONGRATS LORA!

After this Lora gave us some Topics ala Table, and her willing victims were Terry, Rosario, Marvin and Simon.

Terry told us he always wanted to be a pilot, Rosario set her stall out for world peace, Marvin loves Toastmasters, and Simon as always, refuses to be embarrassed by anything.

Despite being accused of not answering the question directly (a career in politics surely awaits) our winner of the topics was Simon. It should be pointed out, that despite having no shame, Simon did give a veiled reference to having partaken in some Frank the Tank type behavior...and promised a further tale for those with enough bribery...

Proof again...that CTI ROCKS!

Darlene wins Area 41 Speech Contest

Club President Jean Francois presents the trophy for Area 41 Winner to Darlene

Forget Area 51, the new hot topic trending today is the Area 41 Speech Contest, and it's winner, CTI Techtalkers very own Darlene Davies.

Darlene's winning speech landed her the trophy at Area Level. She also has 2 more to come (as soon as they are engraved), having now made it all the way to the International Semi-Finals in Florida in August. Her winning entry was titled "The Storyteller", but not the one of Jim Henson fame.

A more gentle and uplifting tale, listening to Darlene I imagined myself back to the days of Storybook International, and "I'm a Storyteller..."

Darlene certainly weaves a rosy image, and one that takes us back to post-war Canada and the return of her father from the war. Depeche Mode once claimed that "Words are very, unnecessary", but I'd have to beg to differ.

Congratulations Darlene!