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!