{"id":205,"date":"2010-12-24T12:49:35","date_gmt":"2010-12-24T18:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/?p=205"},"modified":"2010-12-24T12:49:35","modified_gmt":"2010-12-24T18:49:35","slug":"i-remember-my-first-icebreaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/24\/i-remember-my-first-icebreaker\/","title":{"rendered":"I remember my (first) Icebreaker …"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It was ten years ago this month that I gave my first Icebreaker speech, the start of my Toastmasters journey.\u00a0 As we approach New Year’s, it’s a good time to reflect on our progress, and consider our future.<\/p>\n

While working on my MBA (Masters of Business Administration), a couple of the instructors mentioned Toastmasters as a useful way to improve presentation skills.\u00a0 I was never terribly bothered by having to give a speech, no more than any other sort of work assignment, but I can’t say I was terribly good at it either, and I certainly had never given a speech in front of more than 20-30 people.<\/p>\n

A few months after I graduated, I saw a sign in the lobby of the building I worked in announcing a Toastmasters meeting right in the building.\u00a0 I figured it couldn’t get much easier than that, so I decided to go check it out.\u00a0 There were several speeches, but what I remember most is a woman who gave what I later learned was the visual aids speech.\u00a0 Her topic?\u00a0 The fearsome critter known as the jackalope<\/a>.\u00a0 At the end of her speech, she reached under the lectern and pulled out a stuffed jackalope!\u00a0 It was a great speech, very well-presented.<\/p>\n

After another meeting or two, I filled out a membership application and joined.\u00a0 My Icebreaker came soon after, and it was exactly ten years ago this month.\u00a0 Since I was doing a lot of traveling, mostly for work, my title was “Travel Broadens One’s Mind”.<\/p>\n

My speech outline was a dozen typed lines (I didn’t write it out verbatim), starting with growing up on a farm in Iowa with parents who had never been out of the country, to my first trip abroad (London and Paris for work), a trip around the world (including a leg on the Concorde SST), favorite vacation spots, and places I wanted to go.<\/p>\n

I do remember being nervous, as these were all practiced polished speakers who were going to critique my work afterward!\u00a0 But TradeMasters<\/a> is a good strong club, and the evaluation gave me the courage and strength to continue on with the rest of my CC.\u00a0 And I was surprised to learn that people thought I had a good (and natural) sense of humor!<\/p>\n

From there on, it took me about a year and a half to earn my CC award, but that’s another story.\u00a0 Here’s the evaluation PDF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all my readers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was ten years ago this month that I gave my first Icebreaker speech, the start of my Toastmasters journey.\u00a0 As we approach New Year’s, it’s a good time to reflect on our progress, and consider our future. While working on my MBA (Masters of Business Administration), a couple of the instructors mentioned Toastmasters as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[110,56],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-icebreaker","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":617,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeraffety.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}