About Softalkers

By Suzanne Lennon, ATM
Mentor, Softalkers

It is said, "Time flies when you are having fun." We had a lot of fun, while learning to communicate well.

We held our first meeting in November 1983. There followed many months of struggling to build our membership to 20 members, the minimum required by Toastmasters International to charter a new club. We finally did an informal customer survey and discovered that we were meeting on the same night as the Glendale Community College computer science classes. We changed to Monday evenings and quickly added enough members to charter Softalkers.

How did we come up with the club's name? Because most members were software engineers, someone suggested that we coin a name combining "software" with some aspect of our club's purpose. After a little brainstorming, someone suggested "Softalkers" and we were on our way!

One of our most memorable meetings was a videoconference joint meeting with the AGCS Northlake Toastmasters Club, "Strowgers." The theme was "From our place to your place" or, "A Dis-Joint meeting with Softalkers and Strowgers.")

We celebrated our 10-year anniversary on April 25, 1994 with an open house. Officials from Toastmasters District 3 and Company officials participated, as well as past members. We have had many ups and downs over the years, but Softalkers survived because of hard work, creativity, and commitment. Most of all, we liked each other a lot and enjoyed spending time together outside of club meetings. It helped that we had a few party animals who kept our social lives busy!

We are looking forward to celebrating Softalkers 20th anniversary in April, 2004.