Courtesy of Angela.
Friday, 31 December 2010
Friday, 24 December 2010
District conference pictures
All "official" photos can be seen here.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Xmass party Tue 21st
Sign up before Saturday here: http://district59.eu/viewagenda.php?t=11393 Fellow Toastmasters, Before you max out on Christmas shopping and other "less important"
parties I'm taking this opportunity to remind you that Prestigious
Speakers is once again organising a celebratory dinner after our
forthcoming meeting next Tuesday 21st December. Our friends at La Cave Bistrot in Sarria have put their wonderful
bodega at our disposition to finish off the calendar year with a bang!
Pica-pica; carne a la piedra; and a French cheese selection all washed
down by delicious wine from their cellar for just €30 paid on arrival
www.lacave.es Reina Elisenda FCG, Sarriá, 21:45H BE THERE OR BE ENVIOUS! ALL Barcelona club members (HP, BCN TM and EADA) are invited and you
DON'T have to come to our meeting at Casa Orlandai beforehand if you
don't want to (we'll miss you but we'll have fun anyway!!). Please consult Easyspeak if you haven't done so already. If you do
and your name isn't there please reply to this e-mail so that we can
confirm numbers. The more the merrier! Merry Christmas!!!
Philhttp://blog.prestigiousspeakers.com
parties I'm taking this opportunity to remind you that Prestigious
Speakers is once again organising a celebratory dinner after our
forthcoming meeting next Tuesday 21st December. Our friends at La Cave Bistrot in Sarria have put their wonderful
bodega at our disposition to finish off the calendar year with a bang!
Pica-pica; carne a la piedra; and a French cheese selection all washed
down by delicious wine from their cellar for just €30 paid on arrival
www.lacave.es Reina Elisenda FCG, Sarriá, 21:45H BE THERE OR BE ENVIOUS! ALL Barcelona club members (HP, BCN TM and EADA) are invited and you
DON'T have to come to our meeting at Casa Orlandai beforehand if you
don't want to (we'll miss you but we'll have fun anyway!!). Please consult Easyspeak if you haven't done so already. If you do
and your name isn't there please reply to this e-mail so that we can
confirm numbers. The more the merrier! Merry Christmas!!!
Philhttp://blog.prestigiousspeakers.com
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Entertaining, exhilarating, educational - Carol's comments on Dec 7th meeting
"Entertaining", "exhilarating", "educational", were just a few of
the adjectives our 9 guests used to describe their experience as we
wrapped up our bi-monthly Toastmasters meeting only 6 minutes overtime
—in spite of technical difficulties’ slowing down our start up! Rose
Chong’s general evaluation of the quality of the meeting was also
generally very positive, although she exhorted us to improve our
table-topics speeches. We were reminded of the trainings she gave us
previously (which were excellent, by the way) about improvising
quickly a 3-point impromptu speech using any one of several
easy-to-use templates: e.g., first-second-third — good-not so
good-bad — good-better-best —past-present-future — with the points
sandwiched between an opening that’s as rousing as possible and a
conclusion that reminds us of where the journey began and summarizes
where we were taken.
Our 4 speakers' performances can best be seen in the light of their
evaluators’ effective, off-the-cuff appraisals:
In 3 minutes, Jeff Singer, with his skill of naturally poised
encouragement, executed an effective evaluation of Christian Cokson's
9th speech. Christian did "Persuade with Power" to vote in the
European parliament elections, using logic and emotion, effective
pauses and deep conviction.
"Phil's ability to treat the delicate subject of homophobia with both
dignity and humor was excellent", noted his evaluator, Tulia Lopes,
"while revealing half-way through his speech the link between being
bald and being gay". It was an excellent speech in every way,
touching and funny and inspiring all at once.
Florian Mueck, executing an impeccable 3-minute evaluation structure
of Dimitri Uralov's 6th speech, emphasized the beauty and the
effectiveness of telling a good story well, and just how well Dimitri
had told his story about one hell of a Roman holiday: ...¡la hostia
que ocurríó en Ostia! Congratulations, Dimitri, on taking this big
step forward in speech performance!
Arthur Waters performed his first evaluation by tackling Henrick
Sprengel 's "Working for Love." Henrick presented his project
enthusiastically, giving us a great deal of information, and can
improve by making his transitions clearer and simplifying his visual
aids. Fine-tuning our speaking abilities really begins with our
second speech, and we can all look forward to Henrick's rapid growth
as a Toastmaster.
A special shout-out goes to our Table-Topics host, Angela Dunbar,
whose purse became a bag of tricks that could give anyone the
Christmas Blues (the Toastmaster’s theme of the evening). There was
a book of Catalan Christmas Carols to be sung, a weird looking Santa
as a present for the boss, and a Father Christmas mask that was worse
than anything that’s ever shown up on Halloween! Not only Govind,
Irene Escolar, and Jose Cruset rose to the challenge, but even one of
our guests, Jordi, stepped up to round out our table of topics.
Tuesday, December 7th truly was one more "entertaining",
"exhilarating", and " educational" Toastmasters evening. Carolhttp://blog.prestigiousspeakers.com
the adjectives our 9 guests used to describe their experience as we
wrapped up our bi-monthly Toastmasters meeting only 6 minutes overtime
—in spite of technical difficulties’ slowing down our start up! Rose
Chong’s general evaluation of the quality of the meeting was also
generally very positive, although she exhorted us to improve our
table-topics speeches. We were reminded of the trainings she gave us
previously (which were excellent, by the way) about improvising
quickly a 3-point impromptu speech using any one of several
easy-to-use templates: e.g., first-second-third — good-not so
good-bad — good-better-best —past-present-future — with the points
sandwiched between an opening that’s as rousing as possible and a
conclusion that reminds us of where the journey began and summarizes
where we were taken.
Our 4 speakers' performances can best be seen in the light of their
evaluators’ effective, off-the-cuff appraisals:
In 3 minutes, Jeff Singer, with his skill of naturally poised
encouragement, executed an effective evaluation of Christian Cokson's
9th speech. Christian did "Persuade with Power" to vote in the
European parliament elections, using logic and emotion, effective
pauses and deep conviction.
"Phil's ability to treat the delicate subject of homophobia with both
dignity and humor was excellent", noted his evaluator, Tulia Lopes,
"while revealing half-way through his speech the link between being
bald and being gay". It was an excellent speech in every way,
touching and funny and inspiring all at once.
Florian Mueck, executing an impeccable 3-minute evaluation structure
of Dimitri Uralov's 6th speech, emphasized the beauty and the
effectiveness of telling a good story well, and just how well Dimitri
had told his story about one hell of a Roman holiday: ...¡la hostia
que ocurríó en Ostia! Congratulations, Dimitri, on taking this big
step forward in speech performance!
Arthur Waters performed his first evaluation by tackling Henrick
Sprengel 's "Working for Love." Henrick presented his project
enthusiastically, giving us a great deal of information, and can
improve by making his transitions clearer and simplifying his visual
aids. Fine-tuning our speaking abilities really begins with our
second speech, and we can all look forward to Henrick's rapid growth
as a Toastmaster.
A special shout-out goes to our Table-Topics host, Angela Dunbar,
whose purse became a bag of tricks that could give anyone the
Christmas Blues (the Toastmaster’s theme of the evening). There was
a book of Catalan Christmas Carols to be sung, a weird looking Santa
as a present for the boss, and a Father Christmas mask that was worse
than anything that’s ever shown up on Halloween! Not only Govind,
Irene Escolar, and Jose Cruset rose to the challenge, but even one of
our guests, Jordi, stepped up to round out our table of topics.
Tuesday, December 7th truly was one more "entertaining",
"exhilarating", and " educational" Toastmasters evening. Carolhttp://blog.prestigiousspeakers.com
Monday, 13 December 2010
The Christmas season in back again
One would think that holding a TM meeting (7th December 2010) in the middle of the December “puente” would be a fiasco in terms of attendance. However, our last Tuesday meeting was fully packed, not only with club members but also with guests (we had around 10)…aren’t we an attractive alternative to the Xmas shopping madness?
And Christmas was indeed an important part of the evening. Carol Ann, opened the meeting with Holy Cole’s “Christmas Blues”, followed by tips on how to avoid this seasonal depressive mood, the blues. She chose “blue” as the word of the day and it was widely used by speakers as Günter, Ah-counter, recorded .
Angela went on stage as table topic master and challenged everyone with Christmas related objects : a Catalan Christmas carols book, a dried pumpkin painted as a Santa Claus, a scary Santa Claus mask and a giant sleigh bell. We all had a good laugh and got ready for what to say when we don’t get the right gift!
Speakers brought an assorted array of topics to the evening. Christian appealed to our sense of duty by underlining the importance of voting at the European elections. Philip gave us a lesson in rhetoric by transforming what initially seemed a humorous speech about “bolds” on a moving one on the gay movement. Dima showed us his humorous side by sharing his “smash and grab” car crime experience in the Italian town of Ostia and Henrik made his second speech about the company he recently created with his brother and a friend.
Jeff, Tulia, Florian and Arthur presented their evaluations giving useful recommendationsto for everyone (not only speakers!): paying attention to the structure, the use of humour, introducing quotes and the risk of PowerPoint as “message hinder” . Rose rounded up the evaluation part with a Good/Bad/Evil analysis. An evil remark for next week: time, time, time, we need to be more efficient!
Time to say good bye, with Tulia’s closing words inspired by speakers speeches “Please vote because your vote counts no matter if you are hairy or bold, even when being in holidays in la Ostia because above all you can take the Xmas blues away if everything you do is the work of love ”. See you on the 21st!
Irene http://blog.prestigiousspeakers.com
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Surpassing the own barriers
"Communication is always going beyond limits, surpassing the own barriers”... opened Marie, the “Toastmaster of the Day” at the meeting of the Tuesday 30th November 2010.
From time to time a November Tuesday in Barcelona, is a “November Tuesday”: it was a grey, cold, wet, muggy… Not usual in Barcelona, but gives more the look of a cosmopolitan city and “place of order”, with the regional center right party winning Catalan Parliament elections two days before, and the Barça beating 5-0 its natural enemy the day before. Number 5 is a magic number in different scenarios: the right number to seat at a table, the time for a good speech, the minimum level to pass an exam, and the goals that from time to time the Barça gets!
Marie prepared such a nice agenda with color, pictures, animation, info about Table Topics, speech projects; the agenda with all details of the meeting can be found at the TM easySpeak site, and little can be added.
Looking at people progress is stimulating. As Edith, the District Toastmaster of the year, said, what makes happier to the experienced TM is to see how the new ones flow from the Ice Breaker through the CC manual, improving the stay, the performance and the message. This, the evolution, can be perceived only through the permanent and constant participation in the meetings; is like a film, a movie, where characters are improving at any scene. Slightly different for guest, who get a more static image, a picture of an instant. They like it, they have good feelings, and they get the intuition that will be able to deeply appreciate it when they are able to put together several pictures. It’s the members’ task to turn the guest into a fan. Adjectives for the “PS flattery words bank”: impressive, brilliant, inspiring, enriching, excellent, educational, fun, amazing, humorous…
Next meeting is scheduled Tuesday 7th December, a magic and working day within two bank holidays that makes a magic week within a magic month. For Spanish people, it means “Puente”, all closed. For international TM people we will see what it means, what part of the spirit wins, the northern professional and grey working December day or the sunny southern free winter day. People get used easily to good habits...
Till the next
Alvarohttp://blog.prestigiousspeakers.com
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