Menu: August 16th, 2009

Theme: Thai

Word of the day:Prosaic

CCAT Minutes of August 16, 2009

Club contest:
Humor contestants: Ray, Dolly, Paul Iltchenko.
Eval Contestants:Paul Iltchenko, Jerry Aiyathurai
Target speaker: Richard Frantz Jr.
Contest Master:
Chief Judge:

Area Contest
Date between September 21st (day after our club contest) and October 2nd (date set by district to complete area contests) - We selected Wednesday September 30th
Room: Ray to contact NU
Contest Master Volunteers: Paul Iltchenko or Dolly
Chief Judge Volunteers: Dolly or Ruth
Publicity chair (to get publicity for club as host): Dolly
Refreshments: soda, coffee, snacks; Chair: Jerry

Up coming special Wednesday events
Jerry's parliamentary procedure project, Spread over 5 meetings (20-25 minutes per meeting) November 2009 through March 2010. Publicity at District conference.
Dolly's Effective Listening module: October Wednesday meeting. Build up some publicity.

Special event at October Gourmet meeting
Recipe Recitation Contest Contest to motivate improvement of recipe presentations by treating them as a prepared speech with short time limits.
Event will be timed (people over the time limit will be disqualified). There will be a Prize and bragging rights.
 
From the judging criteria for speech contests: Items that are considered good points of a speech:
Where is the recipe from
Use of Humor (especially at self)
Educational benefit (e.g. wine - why picked)
As brought (for Dolly's benefit in particular)
Comments on development
Information of how substituted (e.g. Why Dolly changed the type of fish .)
Background of recipe
 
Speech development and organization
Effectiveness and clarity
Speech value
Voice
Manner
Physical
Appropriateness
Use of language

Suggestion of reserving a speaking slot at gourmet meetings for a food related speech - rejected, just offer 'brownie points' to motivate people

Planning of timed agenda
4:00 Begin meet up
Appetizers and greetings
Start recipe reading at 4:45.
5:00 Begin meeting at 5 PM
HumorWord Table topics (moving recipes gains enough time to add back)
Soup and Bread
Speeches
Entre'es
Evaluations
Dessert
Business meeting
Adjournment
 
Proposal to assign times for each section so would know if on time or needed to speed up rejected in favor of flexibility of having TM responsible for keeping the meeting running.

Goals: Reminder to members to let VP-E Doug Cloutier know about goals for the year so he can plan for them. Also, location on the FreeToastHost site for submitting goals.

Proposal to set time for evaluations
Evaluations running long, even though individuals under time limit, because have so many people doing evaluations. Suggestion to ask people to limit self to one point so others have something to say and don't all repeat the same points. Suggestion to have timer indicate at 30 seconds for each evaluator. Suggestion to have a second round if any one feels a point was skipped.

Proposal Grammarian Contest
Proposal by Ray that we challenge Cigna after hours and West Hartford to a match with CCAT (since all three clubs have excellent grammarians) to a grammarian contest based on rules for evaluation contest. (Possible goal to eventually have the district adopt a district wide Grammarian contest as a second contest at conferences.) Jerry immediately volunteered to do a target speech (so he certainly sounds interested.)

Treasurer's report by Ray Johnson: Budget being planned, so far no expected expenses submitted.

Theme Czar: Proposal by Dolly that next year's president-elect appoint a theme czar (someone interested in food) to coordinate selection of next years themes.

Club Movie: Dolly proposed creation of a 'club movie' to be placed on the website with members answering the question "Why I joined CCAT".