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!