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
He will represent our club / Area and Division at the District 59 Contest in Düsseldorf, 22-24 Mai 2009. Go, get that trophy!
