What’s Different About This Speakers’ Workshop

Most Toastmasters take several months (or even years) to complete the basic 10 projects and earn the title of Competent Communicator. But we find that a condensed, adrenaline-filled effort is much more effective in showing rapid improvements to students of communication.

In this 2 Day Intensive Speakers’ Workshop, you (the participant) will be getting training, personal coaching and an opportunity to present 8 speeches during this workshop. You’ll get to present them in rapid succession, get expert feedback and rapidly assimilate it to move to the next challenge. By the time, you walk out of the workshop, you’ll have seen rapid subconscious gains in your:

• Speech writing ability
• Confidence on stage
• Volume and vocal variety
• Body language
• Facial expressions
• Use of physical space
• Using visual aids
• Researching speeches
• Persuading and selling ideas
• Inspiring and motivating audiences

If you’ve always wanted to improve your public speaking skills, but didn’t want to engagein a long-drawn process stretching to months and years … this is your chance to step up and accomplish the same result in two short days.

While many other aspiring speakers will be taking most of 2009 to finish the same eight speeches, you will be different. By using the intensity of a high-powered group, you’ll learn to prepare, practice and produce 8 focused speeches in two days (4 speeches each day).

Get Trained And Coached By People Who’ve Been There Before You

To help you speed up this journey, you’ll receive training and coaching from these extraordinary speakers:

• Ramesh Muthusamy, Asia’s Best Speaker in 2002 and 2006
• David Liem, 2nd Runner up in Division U International Speech Contest 2007
• Rachit Dayal, 2nd Runner up in Division U International Speech Contest 2008
• Varoon Charastrakul, Winner of Area U2 Humorous Speaking Competition 2007 & 2008
• Benjamin Marc Wee, The ebay millionaire with an uncanny sense of humor
• Ming Chern, Raintree’s Vice President Education is the puppet-master and chief organizer of all Toastmasters events here

Venue & Timing

The venue for the event is yet to be decided. If you register early, you’ll be kept in the loop.

The workshop will be held over two consecutive saturdays, 22nd Nov 2008 and 29th Nov 2008. On both days, the workshop will begin at 9am and end at 6pm. In the afternoon, we will likely head to the nearby food court together to bond and network.

Cost & Registration

For existing Raintree members, this workshop is free. For non-members, the workshop costs S$55. If you decide to join Raintree Toastmasters after attending this workshop, this tution will be used to offset your annual membership fees - and you will get to attend future workshops for free.

Early Bird Registration: If you register before 19th Nov 2008, the special cost of the workshop will be brought down to S$45.

For any questions, or registration, please contact our Vice President of Education, Ming Chern. The best way to reach him is to drop an email at ming@risingimstar.com. You can also sms or call him at 91078469

In case you can’t make it for this workshop, our next Toastmasters meeting is on 1st September, monday, 7PM. In case of any questions, please contact Kit (printforu@gmail.com) or Ming Chern (ming@risingimstar.com).

Workshop Name: How To Polish Your Inner Charming Voice

Venue & Timing: Saturday, 16th August 2008. 10AM. Adam Khoo Learning Centre at Hoe Chiang Road (Keppel Towers, next to Amara Hotel, at Tanjong Pagar).

How To Register: Email Kit Tay (Vice President Membership of Raintree Toastmasters) at printforu@gmail.com

Workshop Contents: Year after year, when audiences at workshops are polled about what would make or break a presentation - the most important factor they consider is voice. Subconsciously, your audience is always judging you on criteria like shrillness, charm, variety, volume and that ever mysterious criteria called charm.

And while most speakers spend days polishing up the content & words in their speech, and hours looking at themselves in the mirror, they neglect to look at that skill known in Toastmasters as vocal variety. This saturday, we’re going to stop leaving things to chance and bring out your most charming voice from deep within so you can entertain, humor and seduce your audience in your next presentation.

This will be a very hands-on workshop - you will get to hear and fix your most important vocal flaws. At the same time, you’ll get to learn:

• How to automatically speak at the right volume depending on your group
• When to use your rounded voice, and when to use an excited shrill voice
• Hypnotizing people with the tone of your voice so that persuasion becomes a snap
• How to vary your pace of speaking to seem more knowledgable
• The elements of a humorous vocal performance
• How to identify and instantly fix your most glaring vocal flaws
• … And many more techniques that will make your next presentation so much more powerful !

Speaker Profile: Your host for this wildly entertaining session will be a horizontally challenged gentleman going by the slightly unpronouncable name of Rachit Dayal. By day, Rachit is a consultant and trainer who is forced to charm business owners into giving him vast amounts of money. All that money of course, goes towards his after-dark profession of being a hypnotic superhero. Being a super hero AND a hypnotist while hiding his true identity is a tough job - and so Rachit is forced to practice the art of masking his voice to protect his loved ones. And as a superhero his volume needs to be loud enough to tell people to escape the city. (He is also an addicted Toastmaster who is currently the Division U Secretary, Asst Div U Gov of Education & Training and the Immediate Past President of Raintree Toastmasters).

Pricing etc: The workshop is free for Raintree Toastmasters. For guests, if you register on or before 15th August, the price is S$12. If you register on that day, the price is $25. And if you end up joining Raintree, your fees will be deducted from your annual dues.

You should bring: If possible please bring a computer and a pair of headphones. If it is not possible, please bring an apology note from your mom and a guilty look on your face.

Register now : Email Kit Tay (Vice President Membership of Raintree Toastmasters) at printforu@gmail.com. Then someone from the Raintree team will get back to you to confirm your spot.

Hi President Tim & dear members

For those who missed this interesting meeting, I would like to share my experience.

For those who don’t know, a lot of preparation has gone into getting the program up and going. Great job Ming Chern! & the EXCO.  We miss you Mavis.

Thank you very much for your encouragements for my Advance Project 1 “Straight Talk”.

I sat upright on a chair with a desk and a camera right in front of me.  My presentation was flashed onto the wall behind me. This interesting project is a 3 mins. editorial where I talk straight into the camera, subtly looking into my notes like a newsreader in the T.V.

I do research on an issue that is current, give my opinion. With only 3 mins to put my message across I had to be succinct and specific.  Thanks to the very attentive Brian the timer whom make sure I know when to stop….he was more anxious than me…. helpful and mindful – thanks!

I enjoyed our Immed. Past President Rachit’s evaluation using the same sitting position and looking into the camera as well.  Looking at him and listening to his evaluation, gave me a fresh perspective of what I could do better. You are great!  Always so spontaneous and creative. Senior member like me needs a lot of encouragements too! Thank you Rachit

President Tim gave a colourful mind mapping workshop and it is a fantastic refresher for me. We had so much fun when she told her stories……again…..

As if not enough, Ben had stories to tell too……on the spot - for his Advance Project, more colourful.

Guests cleaned up the table topics hidden by Irene in a black bag, the environment was cleaned up in a jiffy … Our new member Mayank went home with the Best Prepared Speech ribbon! Well done!

Next month I will be doing a talk show as a guest and Rachit the Host! Come on down members!

Thanks!
Dolly Yeo

www.mindset-coaching.com

From Rachit, Immediate Past President - Just a quick note, after the meeting some of us got into a car and drove around the city looking for food and drinks. That was followed by two more hours of eating, drinking and being merry - thanks to Ben for buying dinner for the hungry souls, Ming Chern for driving us around and Brian, Janjaree & Tim for their company!

And thanks to Dolly, our members and our guests for dropping by and making the evening so much fun! I had just flown in that morning from a long trip, but the meeting made my jetlag disappear!

Our next meeting is on 16th August and there’s going to be a training on voice, vocal variety & control by me (Rachit) … the workshop and the rest of the meeting is free for members … for non-members, please contact Ming Chern (ming@risingimstar.com) to reserve your place!

We had a bunch of fun meetings in December & January … and this is just a quick note to wish all of you “Happy New Year” and “Gong Xi Fa Cai”.

Our next few meetings will be as follows:

• 13th February 2008, 7pm - The day before Valentine’s day … spend your time celebrating with us!
• 16th February 2008, 2pm - Informal meeting for working on our basics, practicing speeches and preparing for the upcoming competitions.
• 27th February 2008, 7pm - Another great formal meeting.

So, mark your calenders and be ready for a whole lot of fun!

September’s first meeting looks like a real blast and we look forward to having you drop by for our meeting. Here is the program sheet:

You can also download this program sheet in PDF here (right-click and select “Save As”)

For details, just give David (daveliemATgmailDOTcom, 97396959) or Rachit (rachitATrachitDOTorg, 94896814) a call and we’ll guide you on how to get there.

September’s first meeting looks like a real blast and we look forward to having you drop by for our meeting. Here is the program sheet:

You can also download this program sheet in PDF here (right-click and select “Save As”) 

For details, just give David (daveliemATgmailDOTcom, 97396959) or Rachit (rachitATrachitDOTorg, 94896814) a call and we’ll guide you on how to get there.

We had a great few weeks of Toastmasters here at Raintree:

• Our informal meeting in July was hypnotic
  We had a fun & quick informal meeting followed by 5 hours of a hypnosis workshop conducted by President Rachit! The workshop had over 20 participants all learning the basics of hypnosis, trance and healing using this great tool. Thanks to all the coaches from Patterns of Excellence who came by
• Our formal meeting on August 1st was a blast!
  We had several guests from the Patterns of Excellence program who dropped by and joined the club! We also had distinguished evaluators from Chua Chu Kang TMC (thanks Pauline Lim & Jave), Queenstown TMC (a great table topics session by Bernard Gan) and AIA Changi TMC (an always entertaining Hijazi showed us what energy is about) who took valuable time out to give feedback to the speakers. We also had the Division Governer (Kristina was at her sarcastic best ;)) drop by for the Exco installation.
• Our informal meeting on August 25th reminds me of a story …
  We had a fun meeting where a number of our new members started their project 1’s and we had a unique evaluation session where a panel of judges (Eldhi, Rachit & David) evaluated the projects on different aspects (body language, words & tonality, overall impression). Afterwards, Area Governer David conducted an enchanting workshop about Storytelling and had all of us weaving loops in and out …
• We learnt so much from visiting a tonne of clubs
  Last month our members visited Sony Ericsson TMC (David, Tim, Rachit), Braddell Heights Advanced TMC (Mavis), ITMA TMC (David), Tamil Language TMC (David), Great Eastern TMC (David), Chua Chu Kang TMC (Rachit). Each of those visits was quite an experience as we learnt a lot about how we can improve in our next meeting.

This month, we have a lot of interesting activities planned too:

• A formal meeting with a whole new set of guests
• An informal meeting to introduce all the new members
• An in-house humorous speaking contest
• An in-house evaluation contest
• A variety of workshops on NLP, Self development, hypnosis and coaching!

For details just drop by one of our meetings or give us a call

Our next meeting is on August 1st and it’s going to be an exciting meeting! We have tonnes of great speeches, An Introduction to Toastmasters, a very fun Table Topics session and great guests/evaluators from all over Singapore!

The program sheet is as below:

This new website has a bunch of useful content,

• About Raintree - Learn about Raintree toastmasters here
• What Is Toastmasters - If you don’t know what Toastmasters is, read this
• Schedule - This page has our meeting dates & times for the rest of 2007
• Venue - Our meeting location, public transport instructions and driving directions to our club

We have many goals with this website:

• Provide up-to-date information & updates about our meetings
• Have articles, audio and video about the speeches given at our club
• Spread information about Toastmasters in Singapore

And we’ll discover stuff as we go along