Barcelona TM and Prestigious Speakers welcome advanced speakers from Spain & Portugal

Barcelona, SPAIN - 27/10/2009 –

« The contestants have been briefed.

The judges have been briefed.

The timers and ballot counters have been briefed.

Let the contest begin! »

Sound familiar? If so, you’ve probably attended or competed in one of the Table Topics or Humorous speech contests that have been taking place all over Division H at the Clubs or Areas levels.

If not, … Come over and join us at our Division H Fall Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contests!!!

Speakers from all over Spain & Portugal have the opportunity to showcase their humorous and extemporaneous speaking skills, and we all get to learn from the best.

For these professional speakers, a lot of time goes into preparation, practicing and perfecting. Our members are not just telling jokes; they are creating with the art of humour.

Division H as of Oct. 21, 2009, comprises 14 Toastmasters clubs, organized in 4 areas and spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. There are club building activities in the Canary Islands and Madeira, too.

Toastmasters Speech Contests are events that showcase the talents of both members who compete and members who organize and support the events. Many wonderful benefits accrue to those that participate:

• Contestants are afforded a wonderful opportunity to improve their skills in preparing and delivering a speech in a competitive environment
• Organizers are given an educational opportunity in event planning, project management and project teams
• Members not competing are provided the opportunity to learn by observing speakers who have benefited from their Toastmasters training
• Clubs and club members have the opportunity to showcase their talented speakers to family members and guests
• The audience is provided an interesting educational program, entertainment, and FUN!

Contests are held twice a year, once in the Fall and once in the Spring. Normally, two contests are held at one time, yielding four contests per year:

• Each of these contests begins with the CLUB CONTEST
• Club winners compete at the AREA CONTEST (approximately five competitors)
• Area winners go on to the DIVISION CONTEST (approximately five competitors)
• Division winners compete at the DISTRICT CONTEST held in conjunction with the District Conference (six competitors per contest in District 59 representing clubs from 18 continental Europe’s countries)
• The winner of the District 59 Speech Contest held in the Spring will go on to the INTERNATIONAL CONTEST.

Have you completed an educational award (CC, ACB, ALB, etc.) recently? Now is the time to schedule your next speech so that you can complete your next educational goal. Take every opportunity to give a speech from a basic or advanced manual as well as completing projects in the Competent Leadership Manual.

Contest season concludes at the District 59 Fall Conference on November 20^th where District Table Topics and Humorous Speech Champions will be selected.

This will be your chance to see the contest winners from every Division, enjoy a variety of Educational Workshops, and so much more.

« Support your contestants at the upcoming Division Contests! »

The contest is open to the public:

What: Division H Fall Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contests
When: Saturday October 31^st 2009 - 11h00 till 15h30
Where: Casa Orlandai (2nd floor) C/Jaume Piquet, 23 - 08017 Barcelona. FGC: Sarria
Cost: 20 € (including coffee and pastries)
Information: www.prestigiousspeakers.com

Thanks, Aristotle!

New Orleans, the city of Jazz and Mardi Gras - it has always been famous for its unrivalled French Quarter with its vibrant nightlife! I dove into it once when I stopped over on a roadtrip in 1995. Cats Meow on Bourbon Street - a famous Karaoke joint. I was standing in the crowd, admiring those people who dared to step onto that semi-professional stage. I wanted to sing, too - so much! But… I couldn’t. I was just terrified of the multitude of critical eyes in the audience. I suffered from what we all suffer from… stage-fright!

14 years later. I speak at weddings, I speak at parties. I write and perform songs, I have created my own entertaining public speaking seminar, and I am the initiator of The Festival, a pan-European movement where I am constantly confronted with giving motivational and inspiring speeches to a wide European variety of people and audiences.

What has happened?

The answer goes back to the year 1924 when Ralph C. Smedley founded the first Toastmasters club in Santa Ana, California. Toastmasters, which today is present with local clubs nearly everywhere around the globe, has changed my life. It has transformed me into an outgoing, extroverted and passionate public speaking fanatic.

When I first attended a meeting of Prestigious Speakers Barcelona, a local chapter of Toastmasters International, in 2005, I signed up right away. Wow, I thought, these guys are turning into Aristotle - meeting voluntarily twice a month to learn how to speak in public. What I personally liked best were the oral evaluations which were given to the speakers by fellow members of the club after those had performed their five to seven minute speeches. In normal life nobody tells you what you do well and what you still could improve. This is the key differentiator of the Toastmasters approach.

At Toastmasters you learn by doing with people you like! You learn how to speak, how to move your body, how to vary your voice, so that the last row won’t fall asleep. You learn how to use supporting visual aids, how to include catchy anecdotes, quotes, humour. You learn how to keep the eye contact with the entire audience, how to structure any speech, how to keep your time, speak less, get to the point. You learn how to engage with enthusiasm. You turn into a passionate speaker - always showing your greatest asset: your smile!

Maxwell Maltz once said, “Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.” Toastmasters does not only help you to release the hand-break - Toastmasters makes you accelerate with infinite speed…

I will definitely return to New Orleans. I will walk straight into Cats Meow. I will get on stage right away. I will take a deep breath, calm down, look everyone around deeply into their eyes. And then - with passion - I will start to sing: “And now the end is near…”

By Florian Mueck

==========================================

Florian Mueck is co-founder of thefestival.eu - bringing the European idea to life. Before coming up with the idea to create this pan-European movement, the entrepreneur based in Barcelona and Berlin had been working for KPMG, the global advisory firm, for more than eight years as a consultant and business development manager.In both activities, public speaking has always been an important tool to make things happen.

Since Florian joined Prestigious Speakers, a Barcelona chapter of Toastmasters International in 2005, public speaking has become his greatest passion. Florian has an entertaining speaking style which is fuelled by humour, acting and impromptu talk. // https://www.xing.com/profile/FlorianB_Mueck

6th October 2009

From the word go, this meeting was always going to be a bit different - well with a packed agenda and the non-stop chattering German as the host, what else were you expecting ? Further, our venue was packed with: members, regular members, guests, more guests and lot more guests. The guest crowd was so diverse that a member could have been forgiven on entering our meeting, and thinking that our meeting place magically has shifted to planet Mars.

So Dimitri opened the show, you could clearly feel a sense of urgency in the agenda. On the drop of a hat Dima gave way to Angela, who in-turn gave way to Florian, and on and on it went till everyone got tired and gave the lectern to the chattering German. The German was just relishing his time there, and boy he is a damn good host. His word of the day was "Wall".

It might initially sound a bit unusual but given the historical significance of the past week (20 years since the breaking of the Berlin wall), it was indeed a timely one. He proceeded to talk about times in Germany circa Berlin wall demolition. Slowly Florian started sounding like the grumpy cursed history teacher that you surely have encountered in school. Thankfully, he didn't continue long and moved along with the agenda.

Govind (who also happens to be yours truly) was the Table Topic master. My theme was unusual phrases encountered in usual and unusual places. Arthur dealt with an exotic cuisine named "tap water and lawn trimmings." I am sure everyone would be licking their chops to taste this exotic and exquisite dish. Due to stringent copyright laws Arthur has requested me not to reveal the preparation of this exotic cuisine and so I have to oblige (Exceptions are granted if accompanied with an exceptional amount).

Next came Alex and he spoke about making a rope with dope. He calmly went through the motions and it has be said that he did a good job. The actual phrase "rope-a-dope" is a boxing terminology. Given the obvious lack of time, we had to cut short on Table Topic and rush into our prepared speeches.


Luca was the first of the speakers and gave first of his many speeches. He gave a quick fire auto-biography and well it did sound interesting. Except there was a small glitch when the guitar was taken out and..., well never mind.



The next speech was by Dimitri aka Dima aka the multi-faceted Russian of TM Barcelona.

He talked about misconceptions associated with using GDP as the primary progress indicator. He used some nice examples to show the fallacy of using GDP as the sole progress metric. The talk was informative except that there were these economic terminologies dished out regularly, which at times made you wonder if he was speaking English or a mixture of Russian, Catalan, Spanish.



Then along came Ernest. One could clearly make out from the time the meeting started that he was bubbling to burst out his second speech. Eventually, even the German aka the host had to relent and give way. Ernest spoke about the need to show a bit more environmental responsibility by avoiding regular use of plastic bags. He spoke with clear conviction on this issue. To justify the case, he used a pile of statistics that would have scared the living daylight out of anyone.


The final talk was an educational session by Edith. While pouring loads of praise on the club, she pointed out some weaknesses. One of her major concern was a need for improved time management in conducting the meeting. This was unanimously felt by everyone in the meeting.

She opened the floor for opinions in improving our meeting schedule. A whole bunch of ideas started pouring along, and some very nice ideas also.

Another suggestion she gave was to have theme meetings. A theme that would run through the entire meeting. Ironically, the theme of this meeting was almost crystal clear and it was "Bordering Sublime and Ridiculous". The ridiculous part being the host of the show and the table-topics master.


The clock started ticking - tick..tick - and continued ticking, well it still does but the point is that we were starved of time. Even the German felt the need to hurry up. Evaluations went almost on a tick and unsurprisingly all the prepared speeches were well received. On the very next tick Angela took over to close the meeting. Thus, an eventful meeting came to an end.

Thats all from me.

Prestigious Speakers champions to run at the Area level

Barcelona, SPAIN - 30/09/2009 - Short and entertaining, a number of speakers test their excellence in a contest to give the funniest five- to seven-minute speech. The winners move on to the next level of competition.

You are warmly invited to join the Toastmasters Area Contest at the beautiful AMIC HORIZONTE HOTEL in Mallorca, Spain! The contest will be between all the best speakers in the Area- the top 2 winners from each club are invited to compete, so a very high level of speakers will be there.

Prestigious Speakers held its Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contests on Sept 29th 2009 to select its champions:
Rose C., Prestigious Speakers Humorous Speech winner.
Jason T., Prestigious Speakers Table Topics winner.

“I encourage you all to join and support our contest winners Rose and Jason!!!” says Angela Dunbar, Prestigious Speakers club’s president.

To sign up and enjoy such a captivating public speaking contest contact Sheila MacMillan from “Mallorca Wordsmiths Toastmasters”.

The contest is open to the public:

What: Area H1 Fall Conference Humorous Speech And Table Topics Contests

When: Saturday October 17th 2009 - 11h00

Where: “Mallorca Wordsmiths Toastmasters” at AMIC HORIZONTE HOTEL, Mallorca, SPAIN

Hotel info: www.amic-hotels-mallorca.com - If you wish to stay in this hotel, ask to speak to Paula, and say you are with Toastmasters.

Cost: 20 € per person, including tapas (drinks at own cost)
Payment: In cash at the Registration desk on the conference day

Contact: Sheila MacMillan, by e-mail: sheilamacmillan@hotmail.com or by tel. +34 639.603.509
Information: www.mallorca-toastmasters.com

Agenda:
11.00 Registration and Welcome desk
11.30 Opening of the Conference
11.35 Welcome Speech by Area Governor/Stand in
11.40 Talk
12.00 Briefing for judges and contestants / mini break for audience
12.20 Table Topics Contest
12.40 Talk
13.00 – 14.30 Tapas
14.30 Humorous Speech Contest
15.10 Talk
15.30 Contest prizes presented by Area Governor/Stand in

=====================================================
Prestigious Speakers Barcelona, an all-English speaking club and BCN Toastmasters, its brother bi-lingual Spanish/English club are local chapter of Toastmasters International.

"Toastmasters International" is a non-profit organization which gives its members the opportunity to develop and improve their communication and leadership abilities through local club meetings, training seminars and speech contests.

Toastmasters International includes more than 220,000 men and women in more than 11,300 clubs spread across 90+ countries.

Experienced professionals and beginning speakers alike can benefit from our practical, face-to-face learning program. Whether you're speaking to the board of directors, your customers, your co-workers or your kids, Toastmasters can help you do it better.

At Toastmasters, members learn by speaking to groups and working with others in a supportive environment.
Each meeting gives everyone an opportunity to practice.

For general information, visit our website: www.prestigiousspeakers.com

Prestigious Speakers found its champions of fun

Barcelona, SPAIN - 30/09/2009 – This year again Prestigious Speakers held its Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest on Tuesday, September 29th 2009.

Short, entertaining and free, a number of speakers tested their excellence in a contest to give the funniest five- to seven-minute speech or one- to two-minute impromptu speech.

The winners move on to the next level of competition: the Area H1 contest to be held in Mallorca, SPAIN on Saturday, October 17th 2009.

Prestigious Speakers club’s president Angela Dunbar was eager to see the performances: "You never know what the speeches will be about, it’s always a surprise, it’s exciting, and it’s challenging!"

And indeed the audience was stunned by the quality of the speeches and the funny situations described by the performers using vivid words and making good use of props to add up to the hilarious stories.

Of course, one could think that it’s very easy and that anyone could come up and do the same.
But these are professional speakers, a lot of time goes into preparation, practicing and perfecting. Our members are not just telling jokes; they are creating with the art of humour.

Humorous speech
Winner: Rose C.
Contestants: Xavier A.

Table Topics (improvisation)
Winner: Jason T.
Contestants: Josefin B., Jeff Singer, Dimitri Uralov

=====================================================
Prestigious Speakers Barcelona, an all-English speaking club and BCN Toastmasters, its brother bi-lingual Spanish/English club are local chapter of Toastmasters International.

"Toastmasters International" is a non-profit organization which gives its members the opportunity to develop and improve their communication and leadership abilities through local club meetings, training seminars and speech contests.

Toastmasters International includes more than 220,000 men and women in more than 11,300 clubs spread across 90+ countries.

Experienced professionals and beginning speakers alike can benefit from our practical, face-to-face learning program. Whether you're speaking to the board of directors, your customers, your co-workers or your kids, Toastmasters can help you do it better.

At Toastmasters, members learn by speaking to groups and working with others in a supportive environment.
Each meeting gives everyone an opportunity to practice.
For more information, visit our website: www.prestigiousspeakers.com

Prestigious Speakers contest to find funniest speech

Barcelona, SPAIN - Listening to a bunch of speeches hardly sounds like fun, unless it's at our Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest going on Tuesday September 29th 2009 at Prestigious Speakers.

Short, entertaining and free, a number of speakers test their excellence in a contest to give the funniest five- to seven-minute speech. The winner moves on to the next level of competition.

"This fall we have an amazing selection of speakers with the gift of humour." says Angela Dunbar, the club’s president. "You never know what the speeches will be about, it’s always a surprise, it’s exciting, and it’s challenging!"

But don't expect a stand-up comedy routine, she says. The speeches are different from a comedian's act in a couple of ways. First, they're structured with a beginning, middle and end - or introduction, body and conclusion. Second, the humour all relates back to a single topic.

"These are professional speakers, a lot of time goes into preparation, practicing and perfecting. Our members are not just telling jokes; they are creating with the art of humour." Dunbar says.

The contest is free and open to the public:
What: Humorous and Impromptu Speech Contest (Contestants face off with funny words.)
When: 19h45 Tuesday September 29th 2009
Where: Casa Orlandai (2nd floor) C/Jaume Piquet, 23 - 08017 Barcelona. FGC: Sarria
Cost: Free

Information: pr@prestigiousspeakers.com

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The Toastmasters speech contest has three purposes:

1. To provide an opportunity for proficient speakers and those Toastmasters who are interested in competitive speaking to gain experience.

2. To provide an interesting educational program for Toastmasters and the general public. This program can create a community awareness of the opportunities in the Toastmasters program.

3. To provide an opportunity to those Toastmasters who are not participating in the contest to learn by observing proficient speakers.

1st September 2009

And so the holidays rolled on and on until 1 September came, and along came our opening post-summer meeting. A hint of holiday inertia was in the air as pointed by our president, Angela, while opening the meeting. Our regular hang-out place - Casa Orlandai - was under construction and so we had to meet in the bar downstairs. And the atmosphere was quite something ,with cars magically honking at the right time and kids too making their presence felt outside. But it has be said most of the speakers (especially in prepared speeches) were well up-to the task, so cars and kids try harder the next time!!

Our agenda for the evening included 3 prepared speeches in addition to the regular dose of Table topics and evaluation. We had Dima as the host of the evening also called "Toastmaster of the Day". Dima is so diligent in his preparation as the host, he googled the background of everyone whom he had to present . His word of the day was intention and with just about the right intention he went about with his role. I (Govind) was the table topics master, and the broad theme that I set about in table topics was the situation when we encounter animals in various walks of life. So Rose had to deal with a Chim-pan-zee who mistakenly sat in her airline seat. Irene had to play golf in a golf-course occupied by cows. The guests were also not spared and Cris had the pleasant privilege of meeting a clean pig in her house. Finally, David had to deal with a donkey at his office desk which does indeed sound mundane.

Then we moved over to prepared speeches. Jason Thompson spoke about procrastination.He used an example - an interesting example indeed - of how he went about procrastinating while preparing his speech. But surely he did not procrastinate any longer to deliver a good speech. Next came the ever enthusiastic Tulia Lopes and she spoke about being proactive. The pro-activeness shown by her in our club especially in recent time is a solid proof that she was not just all words. In between the talk she started sounding a bit philosophical and one could have been mistaken to be sitting in a nice post-lunch book review of War and Peace.

Finally, came our past president - Xavier Anguera. Xavi started off by asking the audience whether we had a dream. Just as we were preparing to bear the bloody bore lecture on Freudian theories, luckily the ever merciful Xavi spared us all. He would later tell us about a smart charity scheme (http://www.kiva.org) which enables people from almost all walks of life to donate while at the same time providing monetary help to the needy. At times Xavi did indeed sound like Mother Teresa, and from the looks of it she is going to face an uphill task. So buckle up (in the heavens) Mother Teresa , the game is on.

And then came the evaluations. Brenda evaluated Jason and stretched on the subtle points to be taken care of while speaking in a bar with nice ambience (as we had experienced). She also noted that all the speakers had brought printed copy of their ppt slides - something as a speaker we are expected to do. Kai evaluated Tulia and told us all about the speaking qualities of Tulia and also gave her some helpful tips. Finally, Angela evaluated Xavi and told him what we all knew - Xavi is a damn good speaker. Further, she pointed out that as the most decorated member of our club, the bar is very high and he could further improve.

Alvaro was the time keeper and from what i heard all of us did okay. Irene was the Ah-counter keeper, and boy she tracked all the ah's uttered by everyone. It just made me wonder if she also kept track of the ah's and hmm's spoken by anyone who happened to be within a mile radius. Christian was the general evaluator and he was all praise for Dima and the show in general.

That wraps up my report as well. The next meeting is on September 15, see you all then.

July 7th 2009

And so July kick-started with yet another exciting toast-master evening. This meeting was indeed a fresh start with a new set of officers taking over the responsibilities. David presided over the official induction of the officers by making them take up the oaths. As mentioned earlier, the outgoing officers did a wonderful job over the past 1 year with our club being named the "Distinguished President" - the highest level of the worldwide club program. A huge round of applause to the outgoing officers and to everyone who contributed.

The new officers were straight off the blocks with Jose Maria (the Sergent at Arms) opening the session and Angela presiding over the club-business. Angela also introduced our guests: Luca Spinelli, Michal and a couple of more whom I cannot recollect (apologies!!, please help). The ever smiling and animated Tulia was the Toastmaster of the Evening (TME), and this was her first time. Our sessions normally start off with a Word of the day, and the word was procrastination. A word very familiar to us all, but as she timely reminded, a habit which is unfortunately familiar to some of us as well.

And then came the table topics. Table topic is on-the-feet impromptu speaking.I (Govind) was the table topic master. The theme was broadly about taking modern-day objects/ideas to the past. Cristian tried convincing Chenghis Khan about the virtues of family planning. The ever-present and enthusiastic Kai sold tissue papers to cave-men. Last heard, they were queuing up Carrerfours and Caprabo's demanding every piece of tissue paper available. Finally, Manon convinced us all and also a certain Jesus Christ that Michael Jackson is the real God. Last overheard that there is some real dissension up in the heavens!!!.

And then we moved on to our prepared speeches. Recently, there has been a wave of new members accompanied by truly diverse ice-breakers.This week was no exception with yet another TM opening his speech account. The earnest and seemingly sincere Ernest tried hard looking back for answers by rewinding a bit about his past. And also reinforcing that he is indeed earnest!!.

The second speech was by one of the galacticos of our club - Florian. He is a master orator and also it has to be added a master salesman!!. He convinced us about the key points needed to thrive in the service industry. His inspiration was a book titled - The Art of Worldly Wisdom. The salesman was at his elements: picking on the audience and getting them involved in an entertaining 20 minutes.

The final of the prepared speech was by David Blackshaw - another galactico, the resident banker, the former treasurer, the mine house of British jokes, etc.. He spoke about the need to keep a tab- and more than just a tab - on our health and habits etc. It was an entertaining speech and takes him pretty close to being a DTM (Distinguished Toast Master). The only glitch in the speech was the mention and occasional praise of the evil empire (Real Madrid) and the Satan (C. Ronaldo). It has to be pointed out that even a harmless photo of the Satan in evil empire's clothes can bring out adverse and outrageous reactions from adults and children alike. Please bear this in mind when tuning on La-Liga matches the coming season.

Then we moved over to the evaluation part. As mentioned countless times in countless meetings, evaluation is a unique feature of Toastmasters with the emphasis on constructive criticism. In other words, be a bit thick-skinned!!. Dima evaluated Ernest. Kai was the evaluator for the salesman and chipped in some key features of Florian's talk. The consensus is that post Florian's talk, the book is tipped to be a best-seller in every nook and corner of the world. Finally, Edith evaluated David.

These evaluations are learning sessions not just for the speakers but for the audience as well. Brenda was the general evaluator and congratulated Tulia (our Toast-Master of the Evening) on a job well done. The timely Kai was the time-keeper and boy he tracked every speech to the last micro-second!!. Josephine was the Ah-counter keeper and turns out there were more Ah and hmm from the audience than from the speakers!!.

That wrapped up our meeting and the next meeting is on July 21, on the beach!!.
See you all then!!

16th June 2009

Last meeting I was a presenter, and this took a good part of my attention. I completely forgot to take scribbles of what was said. Here is what I remember after a good week has passed.

I arrived 30 minutes early and expected to be first – but our SAA Dima had the room almost ready to go, only one more table was missing. Wow! Well, then I concentrated on the computer and projector setup that I needed, and then turned my attention to the microphone. Sadly I found both wireless mics in their boxes still switched on – and hence with their batteries completely flat. :( My laptop bag holds several spare AAA batteries, but not a single one of the AA type (slightly larger) that was required. Too bad! :(

Guests and members arrived, and we started about 5 minutes past 8 after everyone had settled down. President Xavi welcomed the guests Diana, Christian, Tatjana, Elisabeth and (another) Xavi. We also heard that our club has already made it to the highest level of the world wide Distinguished Club Program (PDF link) -- with 9 goals reached over the last 12 months we are “President Distinguished” now. Well done and congratulations to everyone who contributed. Naming some individual awards for the first 6 goals, I think these were thanks to the CCs Marie and Veronika, ACS Edith, ACB Rose, CL Dave and my ALB (Kai). Everyone should be proud: the whole committee for the behind the scene works (goals 7 to 10) and every club member for their contribution in filling roles, giving feedback and bringing new guests. This was a team effort and is a team achievement. Give yourself a pat on the back ;)

Back to the normal meeting, TME Dima’s theme and word of the day was “Origin(s)”. He had carefully researched some background of every participant's home place, which he used for very effective transitions. Well done! Brenda was our Madam Table Topics Master and presented the situation where your bank account was credited with 10 million € due to a mistake. Angela, Marie and Rose gave their mini speeches on this topic, and it was a mix between giving back, giving to charity, run and hide etc. Very nice! Prepared speaker 1 Adela explained to us how playing games with friends and family can reveal their character. José Mª, speaker 2, presented a story called “The Goodfallas, the Nephew and 1400 bucks” which reminded me of a theatre play. Both speeches were under the assignment 5 “Your Body Speaks” of the first educational Toastmaster manual. Melinda presented her speech “Minimize your ecological footprint”, and her manual objective was to persuade with power (number 9). I was the last speaker in a 10-12 minute project from the advanced manual “Technical Presentations, titled “Appropriate uses of cloud computing”. During my presentation I was using a wireless mouse, and afterwards I took its batteries and put them in the wireless microphone unit, so that at least the evaluators could practice with the headset and loudspeakers on.

Like in any other meeting, there was a lot to learn from the team of speech evaluators. Xavi commented on Adela good use of hands movement and face expressions, and reminded that moving through the room is best done when it serves a purpose. He also suggested that small toys (such as cards or poker chips) would need to be shown explicitly to the audience, otherwise they might not see what you have in your hands or on the table. Edith evaluating Jose Mª was highlighting the great progress he had since his icebreaker, and reminded him that we try to keep the language clean even when reproducing a situation of complete surprise or utter disappointment. Carol Ann was giving credit for Melinda’s speech and her content, along with the suggestion to look for more power in the delivery. Marie then highlighted what she liked in my speech, along with the suggestion to make the presentation of technical topics more “human”. The evaluation part of the meeting was concluded with our Ah-Counter Tulia, Timekeeper Josefin (first role ever, congratulations) and General Evaluator Dave. We finished just before 22:00 and had to rush out.

During drinks and finger food afterwards I heard that next meeting (30th) could possibly start a little earlier so that we would have time to get dinner together at 21:30. At this moment I don’t know any more details than that – please keep an eye on your inboxes ;)

All current and incoming club officers – see you on Thursday 25th June in EAE for the officer training. Everyone else … 30th June. Yours, Kai (2008/2009 VP PR)

2nd June 2009

I felt good to be back, after missing 2 Prestigious nights. S@A Dima preparing the room nicely, including the loudspeakers and the projector. President Xavier introduced the 2 guests Claus and Irene - but Irene had already filled her membership form and will receive a set of Toastmaster manuals soon, so we simply welcomed her to our speaking community. Hurray! Xavi also pointed out what a great trip the District 59 Conference in Düsseldorf was. The level of the competitions (international speech & evaluation) was VERY high, and he is trying to get the recordings of the winners. The District (which is all continental Europe toastmaster clubs) also accepted Barcelona as the host for the Fall 2010 conference - which will be a lot of fun, and a HUGE benefit for everyone living here, being able to attend without travel and accommodation costs -- but it will also require some great teamwork to get everything prepared. The conference team Edith, Veronika, Christian etc. are waiting for you to participate, please. Last point from Xavi was about his visit to the Madrid club Standing Ovations, a relatively young club. He encourages everyone to check the toastmaster search form and visit other clubs whenever traveling to other cities.

Our Toastmaster of the Evening was Jose Maria, who introduced the word of the day "Even-Tempered". Our evaluation team was Edith as GE, Ernest as Timekeeper and Josefin as Ah-Counter. Tabletopics did not appear in our agenda, since we had previously scheduled 4 speeches, among them a 10 minute and a 20 minute project. Unfortunately Melinda could not be there, so we settled with 3 prepared speeches. First one was by David and called "Stopped at the border" - a very imaginative story of how at the end of a flight being stopped at customs can bring out the horror and guilt of your life. Second was Veronika with "The Rat Race ... Exit Right" which focused on work-life balance, corporate fatigue, and gave some great advice on how to better juggle the balls around. Third speaker Rose gave the 20 minute project on "How Toastmasters CHANGES Your Life", a very motivational speech directed at everyone who thought that attending toastmaster evenings is all it takes ;)

Before going into the coaching part of the meeting, Xavi stepped in and improvised a Tabletopics session, since we clearly had time for it. He called Tulia and myself (Kai) up for a speed dating session, and then tasked the next participants to draft an elevator pitch - a short sales talk about a specific company or product. If I remember correctly, JoAnn was promoting a pink mint soap and new member Irene told us why lollipops need to be red and heart shaped. Very nice.

What would our evening be without some great advice from our evaluators? Brenda praised for David for picking such a great topic to work on his CC speech # 6 on Vocal Variety, since he clearly fulfilled the requirements. She then suggest to "project" different characters even stronger, with a completely disguised voice, different pronunciation, body language and using props such as a hat. Another advice I remember was on using a little more pauses, pitch and tone variety in addition to the great variety on loudness that David already demonstrated in his speech.
Xavi was evaluating Veronika, and pointed out that pausing too long can also impact the flow a speech, and also that a speech title that an audience might associate with one specific topic (money) can easily send them off into the wrong direction. Apart from these advices, there was a lot to praise in Veronikas delivery, her use of props, her projected enthusiasm etc. Well done.
Florian evaluated Rose and highlighted how well she used quotes, along with some advice on less text within the slides and building up to a climax when presenting a list. He concluded agreeing with Rose - "We are all great speakers!"
Ernest & Josefin gave their reports, and I believe we did not do so badly on fillers and time keeping. Maybe the evaluators need to be more careful to not run over 3 minutes 30 seconds - which at the competition would be a disqualification. Green light means it's time to conclude & summarize, and you can finish if you want. Don't wait for red ;)
Our GE & Area Gov Edith gave us some tips on how we can improve the sessions. If we move away from the normal agenda with our tabletopics, then we should really announce this change at the beginning of the meeting. The Leadership manuals could to be more present at our evenings, since filling them out is easy for everyone that takes part actively - even a TableTopic participant can tick something off, did you know? Final suggestion: we should include 1 or 2 backup speakers into the Easy-Speak agenda directly - and I took an action item to investigate and implement this. Edith also pointed out that tonight was the first time for Jose Maria being the Toastmaster of the Evening, and that he did a good job. Congratulations.

Concluding the meeting, Xavi congratulated our two star girls of the evening for reaching a Toastmaster Award: Veronika being a Competent Communicator (10 speeches) and a Rose being an Advanced Communicator Bronze (20 speeches). Many of us went to the usual bar for the most important part of the night: mingling, chating & drinks; sadly I could not join. See you all in 2 weeks for more fun!

Tuesday, May 5th 2009

Dear fellows ToastMasters, this evening the meeting brought us a great time of entertainment and lots of laugh! But let's put first things first and give you an overall idea of the agenda.

We had a busy evening with 24 attendants where 12 of them were new guests! The majority were Spaniards, with a very good English spoken level, I have to say.
Good! I am positive that most of them will come back.

Our ToastMaster of the evening was David Blackshaw. He was very creative with the word of the day! He created 2 teams, 3 girls (Melinda, Edith, Carol) and 3 boys (Dimitri, Florian, Ernest), and gave each team a word. But each person on the team had a definition for "their team" word, however only one of the three definitions given was the correct one. The game consisted on that each person on the team, had 30 seconds to explain the definition of the word to convice the members of the other team that his/her definition was the correct one. After the definitions were given, the members of the other team had to guess which definition was the correct one. Very tricky, good, and entertaining!
And the good part was, both teams guessed correctly!
Then we all had to choose which word we would like it to be the word of the day. The chosen one was "Agraffe" (which is the metal that holds the cork in the champaing bottle)
Well done for everyone, for the teamwork, and to David for such a creative "word of the day".

Following the agenda, Brenda Franks was the general evaluator. And she took the time to emphasize the power of a constructive evaluation to everyone's growth in ToastMasters. Also, she asked all the evaluators to make sure their writen evaluations were legible!!!

The spearkers of the night were:
1- Rosy Williams - "The Inner Game"
Competent Communicator Manual 3 - Get to the point
Rosy gave us a great insight of the "inner and outter battles" we have in life using an analogy with the tenis game playing.
2- Jeffrey Singer - "How to stop the drug wars"
Competent Communicator Manual 9 - Persuade with power
Jeffrey gave us a well documented and informative speech on all the issues and consequence of drug dealing.
3- Rose Chong - Personal Development - Social Etiquette: "Are you doing it the right way?"
Professional Speaker Manual 4 - The Professional Seminar
Rose is a star! She prepared an acting where a couple, Florien and herself, went to a restaurant for a romantic diner. From the beginning everything about the guy "manners"(social etiquette) was wrong. For start, he opened the door leaving her behind, the same door hitting her on the face; then they approached the table and he made himself confortable and sit, took the menu and started reading it, without even paying attention if the "lady" was confortable, or needed any help.... and it just got worse.
For every "bad social etiquette scene" she stopped and asked us ramdonly to describe what was wrong. Then she explained what we should've done in a similar situation.
It gave us a great time and lots of laughing!
Thanks Rose!!!

After all the evaluations, the meeting was closed by our Sergeant of Arms, Dimitri Uralov.
Who took the chance to make a very well placed comment, saying that the "word of the day could also be "Respect"!
What he wanted us to be aware of was, although we all have a good time in most of our meetings, and specially in meetings like the one this evening, we have to be aware of that we have to keep quiet enough in order to not disturb the meeting.
Sometimes we are so excited with the whole thing that we start talking to our neighbour ToastMaster and that can be interruptive.
Very well placed observation Dimitri.
I am sure we will all improve our behaviour from now on! :-o

Well folks, this is all from me right now.
I hope the ones who couldn't attend grasped the sense of how the meeting worked this evening.
And I take the chance to invite you to come for more next Tuesday 19th.
It is always a great learning experience. And lots of laugh!
Don't miss it!

21st April 2009

Update from the 21st of April. With our President Xavi away on business travel, and VPE Melinda arriving a little late, it would fall officially on our lovely Marie to be the "Acting President" and open the meeting. However, I sneaked in and told Dima (Sergeant at Arms) to hand over the meeting intro to myself instead. There was a good reason for that: Marie had not so recently completed her first 10 speeches with Prestigious Speakers, and I had more recently received her Badge from TMi. So I used the first few minutes of the meeting to call her up on stage, congratulate her and present her with the CC award badge. Judging by the applause, I think everyone liked it.

Our Madam Toastmaster Brenda presented "Accomplish" as the word of the day, and Angela - jumping in as General Evaluator - did a great job presenting her role and her team: Dima as Timer and Rosy as Ah-Counter.

Next up were Tulia's creative Table Topics, where she challenged Cristian, Arthur, Marie and Rose - not for a 2 minute mini speech as usual, but for a dialog on a given controversial topic. The two guys argued between having 1 woman in your life and being a playboy, and that went rather well. For the 2 girls it got much more difficult: they had to start with certain letters that Tulia would show - and the whole floor was bursting in laughter about the sentences these two came up with. Hilarious.

On the prepared speeches, the first one was Edith's project from the "Facilitating Discussion" manual, where she is the Panel Moderator. Dave, Christian and myself formed her Panel and discussed certain aspects about hosting a district conference in Barcelona.
Veronika then presenter her CC speech number 9 - Persuade with Power - under the title "Now more than ever it is time to give...". It was a great topic for this project, and used a word play... the 2 things starting with C :)

During the coaching part, we heard Marie and Carol Ann evaluate the Veronika and Edith. One important aspect I remember was that any given powerpoint visual aid should stay exactly that: an aid. Slides that are so explicit with formulated sentences, that the speaker is not required if the audience can read, will make a good performance for the presenter very difficult. A good lesson we all took home that night.

The session ended with the remaining reports - Dima on time, Rosy on filler words, Angela brilliantly on the overall session, followed by some club business from Melinda. If I remember correctly, Josefine turned from guest to member, and the whole show was followed by almost EVERYONE staying for drinks and filling the upstairs area of this nearby bar completely. I think 2 years ago we had less people for the Christmas dinner than that. You got to love this social aspect of our Prestigious Speakers Club.

Yours, Kai

7th April 2009

A week after our last meeting, it was raining again. On top of that, football fans were retrieving the excitation of the Champions League. Not talking about the fact that we were in the middle of "Semana Santa".
However, we were more than twenty fellow toastmasters plus 4 guests attending this new fulfilling event.

As mentioned a returning guest, the previous meeting had a high level. This one had a more relax atmosphere but a very good level too.

For his first time as a "Toastmaster of the Day", Govind led the meeting as a very experienced ToastMASTER bringing humour and providing smooth transitions between the different parts of the meeting.
His "Word of the Day" was used several times during the meeting with great amusement: "Flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication" meaning Estimating something as worthless. Try it if you dare !
Lovely jobely Govind !!!

Brenda offered us an exquisite Table Topics session.
Bringing together, for the first topic, four persons stucked in a lift on the thirteenth floor: an asthmatic (Veronika), a claustrophobic (Angela), a cool-blooded one (Xavier) and a 8 months pregnant woman (Christian) ! Can you imagine !!??

Prestigious Speakers is a multicultural club. For the second part, Carol Ann, Melinda and Rose were called to express themselves on what special activities they have planned for the Easter period whatever their beliefs are.

Impromptu speeches are always a bit difficult as one is asked to think on its feet and deliver a structured story in relation with the topic given.
However, anyone could be faced with such challenge in everyday life, at work or anywhere else. It's therefore an advantage to be able to practice it in such an emulating environment. So, don't hesitate anymore sign up for the next meeting !

The session carried on with 3 brilliant speeches from Nizami with a CC speech #1 (The Ice Breaker) titled "Exploring the waters", Tulia with a CC speech #3 (Get to the Point) titled "The Talking Stick" and last but not least Gertrude with a CC speech #3 (Get to the Point) titled "Feng Shui".

For its first appearance in front of Prestigious Speakers, Nizami did a great job. He seemed quite confident and eager to share with us its background and various experiences that brought him to us. I definitely look forward for his next speech.

The session went crescendo on and on.

Tulia informed us about her "Talking Stick" that was used by American Indians to speak out loud their thoughts and make sure they were understood but only one at a time...the one holding the very stick !

Gertrude gave us her insight of "Feng Shui" with vibrant examples of her mother coming down to visit her and almost ordering her husband to remove that big olive tree in front of their front door because it was cutting good vibrations. She did phone up went back home to ensure the tree had been removed. What a lively speech too.

Three top notch evaluators were appointed to indicate what the speakers did well and to try to track down anything they could improve.
Difficult job indeed as it's easy to just enjoy and therefore forget to identify that little something that could have given even more impact on the audience. Rose, Carol Ann and Xavier did a good job by pointing out improvements that could be made that I haven't necessary noticed but I agreed with.

Florian, as the General Evaluator of the session, had four minutes to make a sum up of the meeting:
- mentioning he liked the banner setting...hanging a bit to the left, ;o)
- going through the notes taken by his team: Ah-Counter (Angela) and Time Keeper (Christian),
- then evaluated the evaluators...

I hope I gave you a fairly good description of what occurred over our last meeting. Of course, I didn't necessary recall all the great thing we experienced. Therefore, I invite you to come over and attend to the next meeting on April 21st for which I look forward to enjoying again great performances.

Christian.

31st March 2009

It was raining since the morning, and it wouldn't stop till the next day. My wife said, there would be no one coming to the Toastmaster meeting in THAT weather. I replied "It's not a meeting. It's an event!" :)

Our room was bursting with energy! Did I count that right - 13 guests and 17 members??? Very impressive. You can see who filled which role in the Easy-Speak event page. Quite frankly, there were so many good things happening, I cannot recall them all. What follows are just a few hightlights.

• We have new evalution sheets. And plenty of them. Dima, you're a star!
• Xavi told us about our achievements during the Division Contest in Lisbon:He will represent our club / Area and Division at the District 59 Contest in Düsseldorf, 22-24 Mai 2009. Go, get that trophy!
• Carol, I really liked your table topics. Pointing out differences between año-ano and cono-coño is very helpful to our international little group. And Angela, Julian and Adela confirmed this with their little speeches.
• Florian, Rose and Marie - outstanding performances. The club is lucky to have you guys.
• All other roles - thanks for the contributions, making this a night to remember.
• Everyone who came and could not talk - SORRY!!! Make sure you contact VPE Melinda with your wishes for scheduling your own performances...
  
• EVERYONE - thanks for staying afterwards for drinks, it's really that friendly, social atmosphere that makes our club so attractive! Doesn't it feel like a big family somtimes? ;)
  

Big hug, Kai

17th March 2009

What a great meeting once more, with lots of existing members participating AND what I think is a new record of guests: 9! Yes, I'm still counting Nizami, Maciej, Arthur and Eduardo ... even though they are in the process of joining. Thank you all for coming / for bringing friends. That's the TMi spirit.

Jason started us off being the temporary S@A, and we had Xavier welcoming the guests and CarolAnn leading elegantly through the session as our TME. Her word of the day was Renewal.
Marie had some challenging Table Topics for us, and if I remember correctly Eduard was fighting for a place in pre-school for his kid, Jose Mª had to argue yet another increase of the rent, JoAnn left me so stunned at her performance that I forgot the topic (help me in the comments below), and Veronika had to ask for money to be returned from her best friend.
In the prepared speeches part we had Jose Mª with his CC speech #4 (How to say it) explaining how important it is to start well into the day with a good breakfast, and Raisa with her CC speech #4 (Your body speaks) telling us how to reach Happiness for a lifetime by helping a friend. What a great story! Following those two speeches I presented an educational session about the Toastmasters Promise in "Keeping the commitment" from The Successful Club Series (TMi prepared content).
As the first evaluator Xavier was giving lots of advice to Jose Mª, touching important areas of the delivery such as a strong beginning (like a joke) , having an easy-to-follow structure and controlling nervousness. Evaluator Dave left me wonder why he did not compete in the evaluation contest, since it was just so good: he started with a joke, had lots of well deserved praise, sandwiched in some advice on stance, and then ended positively again. Good stuff!
The evaluation team was made complete by Tulia reporting on our timing, Rose who counted our fillers and Melinda who gave the General Evaluation of the session. And even the guests contributed to the positive atmosphere, commenting on how Jose Mª has improved from his icebreaker to now. Much appreciated!

Other remarkable points I want to highlight: getting to know another founding member of TM in Barcelona (Ruth); people arriving in green & Edith bringing the St.Patrick Day's hat; lots of us going for drinks afterwards and having great fun coming up with a list of 18 different nationalities that we have in the club (no cheating: Scottish=UK, Catalan=Spanish), and we are adding 2 more. Wow!!!
What we can do better is to prepare for enough speech feedback forms. Calculate with me: up to 4 speakers and around 25 attendees = 100 forms required per meeting. Who can organise a large print job & get the money for it from our treasurer, please? Shall we say 1000 pages? TIA!

Yours, Kai

Website problems - solved!

Update: all working again.

Quick FYI that our usual club domain www.prestigiousspeakers.com is currently not working.
Here is the impact on the club's IT resources:

• the club's presentation website - offline, not available.
• email to all members or info@ or all officers via those ...@prestigiousspeakers.com addresses - not working, and even after we will have the problem fixed, any emails sent during the outage will stay lost.
  
• Easy-Speak agenda management and scheduling - working, not affected
• "Club Mail" via Easy-Speak - working, not affected. I am investigating why currently only officers can use this. Other club members - let any officer know if you have news for everyone.
  

Florian has taken ownership of the website issue, and was/is in contact with Marc Haberland, a previous member of our club. At the moment I don't know how long we stay with this status. Hopefully all is back to normal soon.

Greetings, Kai.

Become a prestigious news Author

This weblog can be used by any member of our club to write a meeting update in his/her own words, which will be published in his/her name; and reward will be given in the Competent Leadership manual - projects 6 or 10.
Only one member per meeting - first come first serve. :) Let Kai know!

3rd Feb 2009

Tuesday night has been an exciting meeting, with 2 advanced speakers who needed all the technical kit that our club owns. So while our VP Membership Jose was greeting all 5 (five!) guests, a bunch of others were helping Dima to get the room setup with the laptop, projector and 2 microphones ready. The visitors included one former member of our club - Eduardo, as well as one experienced Toastmaster from a club in India, a young lady called Ndihi. After we got to know them all, our president Xavier was using some minutes in the beginning for the logistics around the Weekend Retreat that must be booked this week in order to ensure availability in the hostels/hotel.

We were so pleased to have Jeff Singer back with us as the Toastmaster of the Evening (TME). To me he was a perfect reminder how the TME can contribute to a great meeting atmosphere by filling the gaps with little stories and even bringing his own visual aids to up on stage - in his case an umbrella which looked slightly damaged from the recent weather we had in Catalunya ;)

Table Topic Master was Getrude, who came up with a great and stimulating situation: The TT speakers were put in front of a Kindergarten group of kids and had to explain them their jobs, along with a personal touch on why they choose this profession. First volunteer was Brenda, who was told she works in Landscape architecture. The obvious explanation to the kids: "my job is to make gardens look pretty". Jose came next explaining the positive aspects of his work as a tow-away truck driver. Rosi explained why all her life she was excited about being a Sanitation Engineer, and guest Eduardo explained his job as Genetic Scientists with the words "I play God". I have very much enjoyed this session, since Gertrude's topic worked very well. Using the virtual kids audience was a great trigger to change the voice, formulating simpler sentences with easy to understand words - which all TT speakers did very well.

The prepared speeches: Florian presented his work on the first project of The Professional Speaker advanced manual, which asks for a 20 minute Keynote Address to be delivered. The topic was Networking, with some great insight on what makes networks work so well, why they are now more important than ever, and even a calculation of Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self Interest. He concluded in 5 easy to follow advices on how to be a better networker: 1 Join Clubs, 2 Talk to the one alone, 3 Say it differently, 4 Smile and 5 Be like JFK by asking what you can do for the other one. The presentation was accompanied with a very nice ppt slide deck, that was supporting the points but did not contain distracting text - Great.
The second project was Edith's "Orlandai Radio Show" which is project 2 from the Public Relations advanced manual. She had our amplifier and 2 normal hand-held microphones available for this performance. The delivery started of with an introduction that she had prepared for her Radio Interview partner Mrs. Angels Smith (also known as Brenda), so that she was appropriately introduced to the radio audience as a subject matter expert - on the topic of Toastmaster clubs. Being one of the founders of Prestigious Speakers, no one could deny that she knows this are good enough to be On-Air with it. She then presented a 5 minute report including many carefully researched topics from the Toastmaster history, for example that until 1973 it was a men-only organisation - did you know? The Radio show ended with her host Mrs. Smith asking a set of questions and Edith answering them for the radio audience.

The Speech Evaluator team of this meeting included Xavier - who gave tips to Florian on how to further improve the speech. I remember he mentioned how important a clear and easy to follow speech structure is - a topic that each new Toastmaster learns during the first 3 projects of the CC manual and needs to carry forward into all other projects. And there was well deserved praise for Florian, who is a master in coming up with great examples and little stories to support his arguments in the speech body. Jeff then called me (Kai) as one out of two Speech Evaluators for Edith - we decided that that this unusual project deserved special attention. I congratulated Edith for the accomplishment, and added one suggestion for improvement: the prepared questions and answers for the final part of the radio show sounded to me almost too perfect, and my personal preference would have been a more natural style of conducting this interview part. Jeff, now with a Speech Evaluator role, added comments on other aspects of the delivery, especially how Edith adopted her voice to the microphone dynamics during the speech - which seem to demand just such a different use of voice than what our meeting room usually requires.

Carol Ann was General Evaluator, and reflected on the great standard that we have in our meetings. One suggestion was re-introducing a dedicated grammarian role. Her team was Jason who gave the Ah-Counter report, and Dima who gave a fun timer report where running over time was equivalent to spending too much money. That's a good reminder, now that the contest season with the strict 30 seconds rule is upon us. Both Dima and Gertrude got a written evaluation in her Competent Leadership manual - well done.
At the end we collected feedback from the guests, and it was great as always. I especially remember how Luis - a first time Toastmaster guest - summarized it well, calling the atmosphere very positive, supportive and an opportunity to learn and try out things.

Most of us headed to the nearby bar afterwards, I heard that we have at least 7 of us going to Gratallops and that 5 members from Valencia Toastmasters are booked, too. Yay, that will be fun!

20th Jan 2009

Tonight has been a fun small meeting. After Sergeant at Arms Dima kicked the meeting off, Xavier welcomed our guest Ernesto (?) and pointed out the great tool set that the club has access to: beamer and pointer for visual aided presentation, and a brand new sound set with different kind of microphones to try and experiment with their handling.

Toastmaster of the Evening Marie was very excited to be with us, and present us the Word of the Day "Unity". In her intro she told us all about the great time Barack Obama and her spend together. Xavier - now wearing the General Evaluator head - presented his team José and Rosy. Then Marie handed over to Dima for his session of Table Topics. He presented the task of remodelling Plaza Catalunya, and guided buy his photos we listened to the following proposals: David wanted to create a Zoo at its place, Rosy explained us that a prison would be a better option, Ernesto - a first time guest - took up the challenge and explained why at this location a night club should be built instead, Marie wanted to have a cemetery there, and Xavier argumented quite logically why the space of Plaza Catalunya should be used for a waste recycling plant. We then voted for the best proposal, and the waste recycling won with one vote more than the night club. Go figure!

Next in the agenda was the icebreaker of Ivo, and boy was that a start into a speaking career. He explained how he grew up near Ultrecht, played field hockey, went to school by bicycle in order to spend the bus money for other things, and two interesting stories related to hygiene from his university shared living. David, his speech evaluator could hardly point out anything that needs improving. He recommended a more firm beginning, and then just highlighted all the great delivery aspects that Ivo used: no notes, no nervousness, great body language - especially using the hands, using humor, a simple but effective toothbrush as visual aid, and even giving a moral: "That's when I stopped caring what other people think of me." Oh, and David mentioned what his personal relation to the Dutch culture looks like. Very well done to both.

In between Ivo's speech and Dave's evaluation, I presented an educational session called "Going beyond our club", which was a great framework to talk about the upcoming spring contests in "international speech" and "evaluation", as well as the learning and leadership opportunities around conferences and the area/division/district layers of the international toastmaster organisation.

Towards the end of the session, GE Xavier was calling up on his team for the technical reports. Rosy explained that the Ah-Counter task is far more difficult than it appeared to be, which I personally agree on. Timekeeper José told us that almost all stayed within the normal time or 30 seconds over - which is the limit for competitions. Only my educational session run 38 seconds too long - I think I got carried away.
Lots of positive words from GE Xavier, along with the comment that we need to get more experience on the microphone. He then briefly gave the stage back to Marie, so that she could call him up again as our President Xavier. We received positive feedback from our guest and concluded the evening by playing Tetris with all the boxes that need to fit in our cupboard.

Make sure you keep the evening of March 7th and the day 8th free - that's when we plan to be in Gratallops. We will likely leave Barcelona around 6pm using car sharing, meeting for dinner there at 9pm, followed by some toastmaster or TableTopic activities. During Saturday we will have the Area level competition as well as some fun and educational sessions. For Saturday night you can either come back to Barcelona, or spend another night there or in the region. Not sure how the wine tasting, that the village is famous for, fits into that schedule, but I guess we'll figure that out soon. See you in 2 weeks - where we are still looking for a Toastmaster and many other roles. Keep filling your CL manuals!

One more thing: Our club member Govind said "hi!" via email from India, where he spends time currently. He has been visiting a Toastmaster club in his home town, which is exciting news for me as his mentor. I'm hoping he will tell us all about it in a speech when he is back later in February.
Good night. Kai

Club Meeting 13th Jan 2009

We really filled the big room with 16 members attending, and we welcomed 5 guests: Gil (Belgium), Michael (from Germany), Arthur (from America) and Maria and Pau (from Barcelona).
The room setup looked a little different, since we introduced clipboards to replace some of the tables - this should improve the time we need preparing for and cleaning up after the meeting. Special thanks to everyone who assisted with some last minute preparations, such as making speech feedback copies (Melinda?) and organising chairs.

Dima got us started almost in time. In the President's Introduction, Xavier welcomed our guests and also inducted Tulia and Rosy to the club: both acknowledged the Toastmaster Promise and all attending members confirmed they will assist them in their learning progress as best as we can.
Toastmaster of the Evening Edith then had to announce all the last minute changes in the agenda: Marie and Brenda could not come (hope you get better soon!), and in their place we had Raisa and Xavier added as Speech Evaluators. Rose could not prepare her Advanced Speech on time, so she and I (Kai) swapped roles: I delivered a speech and she would evaluate me. With the agenda sorted out, we jumped right into the Table Topics, where TT Master Carol Ann gave challenging situations from the life of the Human Resource department: Dima dealt with an senior member of the fictive company, Raisa gave tips to her colleague on how to deal with sexual harassment, Ivo took over an HR role as well, and Rose dealt with an employee who is expecting a baby soon.

Prepared speech 1 was from Gertrude, working on Competent Communicator (=CC) Project 2 (Organise), speech title "Searching for Answers". She presented and recommended a book "Anti Cancer" and explained the sad personal event that lead her to finding this book.
Before going on with the other prepared speeches, Edith introduced the General Evaluator - so David explained his role, as well as his Team Ivo on the lights and JoAnn counting our fillers.
Speaker number two was Jose Castellano, working on CC Project 3 (Get to the Point), and with "Atheist buses vs. Faith buses? God is in the debate" he picked up a topic that recently caused some public debate in Spain.
After a great introduction from Edith, Rosy followed with a brilliant Icebreaker titled "Never too late to be what might have been". She explained details from her childhood in Scotland, uni and interesting times working among 60(?) men on an offshore oil rig. As visual aid we had 3 fossils going through the room.
Speech number 4 by Kai titled "Where do I start" was about how a new Toastmaster can work on the Competent Leadership manual assignments in parallel to the speech projects from the CC manual, and there was a hand-out along with it.

Evaluation Time. Xavier highlighted all the good details from Gertrude's speech and also gave some tips about hand movement. Melinda's evaluation of Jose also included the physical side of the speech delivery, as well as content and giving practical advice for improvement along with motivation. Raisa had the tough job of evaluating Rosy's great ice breaker, and she did well. She pointed out that being too relaxed as a speaker could be perceived as "sloppy", but overall gave a lot of praise for a speech that had the feeling of a great "Bed time story". Rose's evaluation of my speech was positive on what and how I delivered, but she also pointed out correctly that part of the required objectives from the manual were not meet by the content, so we agreed I would do that one again.

Wrapping up, we Ivo and JoAnn gave their reports, concluding that we were not too bad on the filler words and could improve a little on the time keeping - I think 1 speech and 2 evaluations went over more than allowed. Then David gave a great General Evaluation of the meeting, highlighting all the TI standards such as banner in place, starting in time, and giving dedicated praise to each of the Speech Evaluators. "That's where we all learn in every meeting."

Tonight has been a special schedule, so the next meeting is next week! 20th January.

Regular Club Newsletters -- a New Years Resolution

Fellow Members and Dear Guests,

Happy New Year! Over the last 6 months a lot of my time as the VP Public Relations of the Prestigious Speakers Toastmaster Club has been consumed by the migration to and adoption of the Easy-Speak management system. Now that this is completed, it's time to pick up the habbit of creating regular club newsletters again.

This also creates the opportunity for club members to contribute, especially when I cannot participate at a meeting, and will be rewarded with progress in the Competent Leadership Projects #6 "Help Produce the Club Newsletter" and #10 "Club Newsletter Editor"!

I will move existing content from Florian, Rose, Xavier and other previous authors of News / Meeting updates etc. over to this blog, too. So this will create one common archive full of Prestigious History. Enjoy!

Kai Steinbach, Januar 2009.