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!