Igniters' club Humorous speech results.

Congratulations Diane for winning the club Humorous speech contest. Diane will now advance to the Area contest.

Igniters Table Topics contest results.

Congratulations Diane for winning the Igniters Table Topics Contest.

Chris C placed second.

And Christopher H placed Third.






Nandini, Gio and Christy present the certificates to each contestant. Congratulations to all of the competitors for participating and for their achievement!

Glen wins the Making a Difference Award

Glen has been an enthusiastic and dedicated member of Igniters for the past five years and has served as our President for 2012-2013. He had a challenging year to help us move to a better location and our club really enjoys our new home. He and his executive team fostered a fun learning environment for our club to achieve Distinguished Club status.

He completed several speeches towards his Advanced Communicator Gold and is currently an Area Governor in 2013-2014 and on his way to achieve his DTM. 

Glen deserves this award as he truly has made a difference to our club. Thank you Glen for your contributions to Igniters and congratulations on your award.

2013 Executive Induction ceremony

Club Executive induction for 2013 President Marvin, VP Public Relations Nandini, VP Education Gio, Area Governor Chris H, Sargent At Arms  Sina, Secretary Christy, VP Membership Adam, and Treasurer Abhinav (missing).

Spirit of Success New Member

Congratulations Adam for winning the Spirit of Success New Member award!

Diane wins the Spirit of Success Igniting Spirits Award.

Congratulations Diane on achieving this award.

Michel receives his Competent Communicator Award.

Congratulations Michel for achieving your Competent Communicator designation!

Michel receives The Spirit of Success Communication and Leadership Award.

Glen presents the Spirit of Success Communication and Leadership Award to Michel of Igniters Toastmasters. The Spirit of Success award recognizes a new Toastmaster whose enthusiasm, commitment, and achievements represent the spirit of the Toastmasters organization. Congratulations Michel on winning this award!

Rookie of the Year Award.

Congratulations Adam on winning the Rookie of the Year Award for 2013!

Nandini wins the Spirit of Success Speech Achievement award.

Congratulations Nandini on your achievement.

Spirit of Success President’s Choice winner.

Congratulations Christy for winning the Spirit of Success President's Choice award for 2013!

Igniters Grow in the Fall

 Mentoring - Silvina is our Mentoring Coordinator Why would you want a mentor? Support, Advice, Experience, Recognition. Saves you time too! Theme Meetings - Every week we have creative themes and challenge words too. Share your passions and interests! Igniters have fun with politics, theatre, England, Halloween & more. Club Contest - Members learned about leadership skills, thinking on their feet, and humor. Chris - Chairman Results T.Topics                                       Humor 1. Shana                                       1. Nandini 2. Michel                                      2. Dave 3. Mary Jean

This digital scrapbooking design personalized with Smilebox

Congratulations, Jeanette!

Bright and early in the morning, speaking in the dreaded number one slot, Jeanette Williams seized second place at the District Evaluation Contest. Way to go, Jeanette! Next time let's see if they can schedule one a couple hours later.

Content Update

Jeanette is advancing again to the District 42 Spring Convention, after a second-place finish in the Division evaluation contest. Division winner Harvey Taphorn was unable to attend the District contest, so Jeanette will represent us once more ... at least! Evaluation contest is at 8:30 a.m., Sunday May 6 at Radisson Hotel Calgary Airport. Seating is by registration only at http://www.d42takethelead.ca.

Contest update

Igniters are advancing to the Division evaluation contest on Friday, April 20, represented by Jeanette Williams. Jeanette won in our own club evaluation contest, and later the same night gave us a deeply moving speech in the international contest. She placed second in a tough field in the area evaluation contest, but has advanced to Division due to the absence of the winner. Come out and support Jeanette, 6:30 - 9:30 at the Brentwood Sportsplex.

In our international contest, Garrett Ulmer won our club contest with a speech about his daughter's struggle with reading, edging out Dave Brown's speech about changing his name twice. Garrett was unavailable in the area contest, so Dave advanced, and placed second behind an astonishing speech about the power of storytelling from the area winner, Darlene Davies. Darlene's speech is a thing of compelling beauty, anyone who missed it at the area contest, and anyone who wants to speak better, should make a point of seeing it on Friday at the division contest.

Directions to Brentwood are here. Admission is $5.

Congratulations Chris!

Congratulations to Chris Crooks, who completes his stint as Speechcraft Coordinator this Wednesday, March 21.

The job is a huge responsibility, bringing the Toastmasters program into the community with our corporate client, Safeway. It's a challenge for their employees, a challenge for all of us to volunteer and help out, and especially a challenge for Chris, who has held it all together for us.

The last night of the program will be a bit more casual, with extended table topics and a few snacks. No homework for the participants, because district speech contest winners Garrett and Dave have agreed to deliver two of their best speeches from past contests. All Igniters are welcome, we meet at the training center for Safeway, 1020 64 Avenue NE, at 6:15.

My trip to Lethbridge was successful -- Igniters win the District Humorous Speech contest for the second consecutive year! I've been checking with District 42 to figure out if that's ever been done before -- two different people from the same club winning in consecutive years. Going into the club contest, my goal was just to get past the club level. And I remember thinking it wasn't really fair to have to beat last year's district champion to attain that goal. But next year, somebody may have to beat two district champions.

You can take two lessons from my experience if you're thinking about competing next year. One: Even champions remain beatable. And two: If you can beat Igniters, you can beat everyone.

DB

Igniters were out in force at the Division J contest Friday night, and brought home some new hardware in the Division Awards and the Humorous Speech Contest.
Igniters won Newsletter of the Year, for what, the third year in a row? Congratulations to the editor, Eden. She has really thrown down the gauntlet for whatever brave soul is supposed to follow that act.
And I won the division humorous speech contest. I really want to thank again everyone who helped me refine The Evilution of Rock over the last few weeks. Those little bits of paper you collect after a speech? They're actually full of insightful and useful advice! I never really sat down with them and studied them, for two reasons -- one, there haven't been many occasions on which I plan to do a speech more than once. And two, by habit, I've always been kind of solitary in the creative process. I thought I didn't like collaborating. But last night was the sixth time through that speech for me. I've had the time and the motivation to really think about peoples' suggestions, and incorporate a lot of them. When I look at the difference between round one and six, I can see how much I've learned from everyone at the club. Thanks, everyone!
There is just one more round to go: the District 42 Conference, at the Coastal Hotel and Convention Centre, Lethbridge, Nov. 4 - 6. If there are options for car-pooling, let's discuss them after the meeting on Tuesday.

- Dave Brown

Area Contest

Congratulations to Terri and Dave, winners of our club table topics and humorous speech contests. Come and cheer them on at the as they represent Igniters at the area contest, at the University of Calgary Student Council Chambers, MacEwan Student Centre. Thursday, Oct. 6, from 7 pm to 9 pm with registration at 6:30.

It's been a whirlwind summer for Igniters, and we've had some accomplishments that should be recognized:

• Glen Brown, one of the most experienced and supportive long-term Toastmasters around serves our club well in executive roles, and with his keen evaluations and hilarious style as toastmaster. And now Glen has turned his energy back to planned speeches and reached his long-sought Advanced Communicator Silver award. That's about 20 speeches and two presentations, and more work than even that sounds like. Congratulations Glen!






• Garrett Ulmer, last year's district Humorous Speech champion, continues at full speed, and reached Advanced Communicator Bronze with a side-splitting speech about an oblivious uncle versus a rambunctious dog. Congratulations Garrett!