I was Toastmaster of the Day for today’s Silver Tongued Cats meeting, so I had to come up with a meeting theme. Sometimes, it’s easy to draw the theme from things happening in my life, but I didn’t think “Refactoring Python Code” made a good theme for this group. Other times, I choose a theme based on something that happened on that day in history, but nothing appealed to me. But as I was searching for ideas, I stumbled across National Love Your Files Week and had my theme: “This week is…”.
The Table Topics Master asked questions like “What makes a week good for you?” and “Do you think the weeks starts on Sunday or Monday?” and the Wordmaster picked “Timing” as the Word of the Day, so the meeting held together well.
I introduced a “special” week at each break in the meeting agenda, five in all. I also threw in a little information from the sponsor’s website – here were my choices:
National Love Your Files Week from Jan Jasper at Jasper Productivity Solutions:
I created this week to promote a positive attitude towards filing – whether paper or computer files. Filing gets a bad rap and it’s undeserved. A good filing system can actually be a powerful asset. People dislike filing because they’re doing it the hard way. If your file system is set up correctly, it’s easy to maintain and a pleasure to use.
International Week of Happiness at Work from Happy Office Academy in the Netherlands:
Everybody wants to be happy. Also at work. We spend a lot of time at work after all. Plus, when we are happy at work, we are likely to also be happier in the rest of our life. We believe that Happiness at Work should be on the list of top priorities of all organizations, big and small, national and international. That’s why we declared the last week of September, in 2021, 20 ”“ 26, the International Week of Happiness at Work. Join us!
International Clean Hands Week from the Henry the Hand Foundation and the Clean Hands Coalition:
We use International Clean Hands Week (3rd week of September annually) as our pivotal marketing strategy to raise awareness. Remember, we humans are the petri-dish that grow and multiply all seasonal flu, influenza-like illnesses, and even COVID-19. So if we all practiced vigilant hand hygiene and cross-contamination awareness, we would eliminate many preventable respiratory and foodborne infectious diseases.
Tolkien Week from the American Tolkien Society:
Tolkien fans celebrate Hobbit Day and Tolkien Week by throwing great feasts (often with seven meals) and sharing the joy and merriment of being with people that have the same interests. In honor of the Hobbits’ favorite choice of footwear, many fans also spend Hobbit Day barefoot.
National Indoor Plant Week from Interior Tropical Gardens:
National Indoor Plant Week is a week-long celebration of the perfect indoor air cleaner. Annually celebrated the third week in September, it was established to promote and increase public awareness of the importance of live plants in interior spaces. Remember, “the oxygen doesn’t arrive until the plants do!”
I’m giving a speech at next week’s meeting – maybe I’ll stretch this theme to cover that speech, or maybe I’ll talk about Python code. I’ve got days to decide!