[Note: This post is part of a continuing series [1] as the “first take” of tonight’s Portland UCG Spokesmen’s Club meeting, of which I am the secretary.]

After the meeting began a little bit late because the secretary was a bit late due to traffic that was slow because the fog was socked in near the rivers and on the freeways and bridges, there was an abbreviated first session. After a short commentary about the club being glad that there were snacks after all from the director, the secretary gave his usual thorough minutes and the treasurer gave his usual brief report. As the person responsible for updating the club about the venue and cost for the upcoming ladies’ night was not present, there was no business section and so we moved on to a very serious and thought-provoking topics session that included topics on government monitoring of e-mails and internet behavior, the treatment of immigrants, our thoughts about how this year would go, and comments on giving advice to a coworker living in sin. Although the topicsmaster had an ominous envelope titled “Chinese Volunteers” no names were chosen even though not all members of club participated in the topics session (perhaps because some of us were a bit long-winded). After this the director made comments about the topics and answers and commented at some length about the need for people to remember that once something is posted online it is online forever.

Since all of the food tonight was acceptable (no mango juice this time), and was well-balanced including crackers, beef sausage, cheese, veggies and dip, fruit juice, and oatmeal raisin cookies, there were few snacks left and no complaints about the food (and quite a few people pleased at what was brought). At least one of the younger speakers was in need of a bit of encouragement about his first speech, but all of the speeches were excellent (even if the first three were long). As far as the speeches went, there were three icebreaker speeches (one of which was given the Most Effective Speech award, which was well earned) and two add color speeches (both of which were speeches given using a detail approach). After the speeches were given the Director spoke at length about the different approaches to add color speeches, commenting that there were two distinct approaches, one of which was the detail approach and the other of which was a descriptive approach that could be helped by a speaker using a writer like James Harriot (“All Creatures Great And Small”) to compare descriptive language to. After that club was dismissed, and the secretary was given a new job of writing an outline of the speech-specific tips given by the Director, to be collected and distributed in some fashion to be determined later.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/secretarys-notes-part-one/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/secretarys-notes-part-two/