Rick Eshbach Takes a Bow!

Distrct Table Topics runner-up Rick Eshbach visited our meeting yesterday and brought along the trophy from the district conference last week.

Rick Eshbach and his 2008 Trophy

Rick displayed joy and (some understandable) pride in his achievement, handled a new table topic with aplomb, and tipped us off that TableTopics is a great tool for developing skill at answering questions, especially if you buy it on EBay instead of paying full price. Quicktime video (large download) of Rick’s contest appearance is available at Rick’s web site.

District Contest Champions

Mail from Brinker friend Rick Eshbach reminded me that I’m overdue to publish the results of last Saturday’s speech contests. In the table topics contest, Rick placed second behind Sam Conner, and Past District Governor Aref Dajani placed third. Icy Barton is this year’s humorous speech champion. Martin Horn placed second, and a stalwart from our area, Amelia Autrey, placed third. Congratulations to all.

Grammarian’s Resource

The BBC has posted 20 of Your Most Hated Cliches. One of my pet peeves, “at the end of the day,” gets dishonorable mention, and the list is a good reminder of the verbal garbage we should all be on the lookout for.

Self-development and Leadership Plan

Here’s an interesting post called The ABC’s of Self-Development: Accomplishments, Beliefs, Challenges. It’s a valuable reminder of the need to keep ourselves on track, and it offers some concrete suggestions for doing just that. I especially like the suggestion to watch TED videos. I’m also intrigued by the pyramid in the accompanying photo. I’d like to have a desktop reminder like that to keep my goals and objectives in front of me.

Presenting Yourself Powerfully, II

Part 2 of Presenting Yourself Powerfully is now available at Lifehacker. This one focuses on Presentation Skills at work.

The Way I See It

Starbuck’s is not the place you would expect to find advice about evaluation. But here’s a really useful reminder that was printed on their cups as part of their series The Way I See It.

You can learn a lot more from listening than you can from talking. Find someone with whom you don’t agree in the slightest and ask them to explain themselves at length. Then take a seat, shut your mouth, and don’t argue back. It’s physically impossible to listen with your mouth open.

– John Moe