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Clapping And Dancing

It floated in the air. In the first meeting after the Division Conference, there was a general atmosphere of excitement. Easy to tell, as human beings we still felt that adrenaline rush, consequence of enjoying with the best speakers in Spain. We all wanted to put into practice the great skills we admired in them. Can you imagine a better scenario?

Due to the number of attendants, we were obliged to use the big room. Happily, there were many members, and we were glad to welcome almost 10 guests, some of them curious after reading the “El Pais” article on the conference.

It was, in words of the General Evaluator, Carlos, an “unusually fantastic meeting”. It was conducted by José Alonso, the Toastmaster of the Day, who warned the guests with his usual ironic touch: “for those of you who are clapping, you will end up fed up with clapping”. He surprised us inquiring about the dance skills of the participants, since none of us were aware of this facet of him! This topic provided much fun, for instance, we discovered that Jim won one professional cha-cha-cha contest and that María loves to dance in her room.

20150429_214627The agenda contained one Thought of the Day by Mabel, one project speech (number #5) of the Competent Communication Manual by Anselmo and the first project speech of the Advaced Manual “Speaking to Inform” by Eric.

Our passionate storyteller Anselmo delighted us with a personal story about a chocolate cake that he prepared for the Golden Wedding of his parents… in only 5 minutes!! His evaluator, Teresa, challenged him to give a serious speech, because it is clear that he already masters the art of storytelling.

20150429_214702Eric’s speech, “Words speak, do you listen” dealt with the meaning of words. His speech pointed out that it is the time for ours to understand what words truly say. It is to be noted his particular spelling of the words “PEACE: Pacific Engagement Against Conflictive Encounters” and “STRESS: Simply Temporary Retrogressing Energy that is Severe System” evaluator, Jim, showed his humor just when entering the scenario: “Your speech reminded me when I was studying vocabulary lists” and praised his speech.

The Table Topics Session was carried out by our uprising newcomer David Aguiar. He challenged the three selected speakers (Alex, Carlos and Luciana) to decide their destinations in function of two variables: the amount of money and mean of transport, and concluded the role with a personal story that showed how traveling makes it easier to make up one’s mind. María, the evaluator, was impressed with the first time of David as a Table Topic Master, and provide all the speakers with specific advice.

20150429_203001To close the meeting, the president came up to the stage for a Presidential Announcement, that was starting to be called, by request of the audience: “Let the president speak!”. We were relieved to check out that Jaime was alive after running the complete Marathon and he gave special recognition to María and Anselmo, who, in a record time, had delivered more than 5 speech. He concluded with a sadly news: his farewell (seems that we are going to miss to claim “The President likes to Speak” encouraging the members to apply for the President and the other Committee Roles). Elections are near and you can be a canddate!!

Written by Pilar.

 

Happy 15th Birthday, Toastmasters Madrid

Jack Campbell recieving the Madrid bannerToday is our official 15th birthday as a chartered club in Toastmasters. 15 years of Toastmasters in Spain, seeing how we grow in our skills by practicing in a safe environment. We asked the founder of our club, Jim Dodson, to tell us something about the beginnings of our club. Here you are his words.

It was in May of 1997, when I was invited to an initial start-up meeting. Lunch time at the Irish Rover Pub on Avenida de Brasil, 7. I had heard of Toastmasters before, when I lived in Sao Paulo. I had even attended two meetings as a guest in 1971. I could not join then, though.

This small group got together, maybe 6 or 7 of us, under the guidance of a young English Businessman. We met monthly for the lunch meeting, and having paid our fee, had manuals and a club number, 9605. Our Englishman leader left in September that year, being recalled back to the UK by his company. And he has not been heard from since! The meetings progressed, and we all advanced in this unchartered club.

The Founding Members (1998-99)

Then, in early 2000, Mike Monroy and his wife Jackie came to visit from Rota and convinced us to charter. Which finally happened in May of that year. The Rota club did so a couple of months later, followed by Palma de Mallorca and Marbella. Interesting to see how the same great idea blossomed at the same time in different places in Spain.

Oficial Charter Ceremony Gala Dinner

2001 came and Mike was back with a US Navy Lt. to encourage us to join the District. We “resisted” until 2002, as we were happy doing our thing, by ourselves.

Ed Macquisten, Mariana Zanchi and Valerie Hobson

Moving on, Toastmasters clubs then started throughout Spain, but in 2009 we were still only eight clubs, The ninth club was created (Standing Ovation), which was the beginning of the Division H in District 59, that comprised the Iberian Peninsula.

Dianne Kiddell and Peter Finch

The recent history of Toastmasters in Spain is a history of growth. People have realized Public Speaking and Leadership skills are both important and fun to develop and Toastmasters is the perfect environment for that. From being alone in Spain, our club is now part of a network of seven clubs in Madrid, with almost 400 members in Madrid, and roughly 1500 in Spain.

Thanks to Jim for the memories and Mike for the pictures.

Club Speech and Evaluation Contests

wpid-20150304_205405.jpg On March 4th we held our Club speech and evaluation contests. The meeting had been efficiently prepared by Raquel, who also acted as Contest Chairwoman. A number of club members volunteered in the supporting roles. The meeting run smoothly, in the same friendly atmosphere as always.

Both contests reflected the high level of the club members. At the speech contest, we enjoyed the pitches delivered by Eric, Jane and Teresa, who was brave enough to enter also the evaluation contest, this one together with Luciana and Jaime. Each of the speakers managed to enthrall the audience, each one with a very different topic and style. Not an easy job for the judges, who declared Eric the winner of the contest, followed by Jane. The variety of the chosen topics, the differences in the presentation techniques and the feelings that all speeches aroused on us reflect the high level of our club members.

Despite the careful organisation of the meeting, the planned test speaker for the evaluation contest did not show up and Nacho volunteered to replace him. His was a truly impromptu speech, focused on informing about the Division Conference to be held the last weekend in April, where Toastmasters from all clubs in Spain will meet in Madrid to compete in these same categories at national level. There will also be workshops to develop our leadership and public speaking skills, as well as networking activities.

Teresa, Luciana and Jaime showed their command of evaluations by giving very comprehensive, structured and productive syntheses of the test speech. They highlighted both the most remarkable aspects of the speech, and those few issues that could have been improved, indicating explicitly how that could have been done. Another tall order for the judges, who declared Jaime winner, with Luciana ranking in second place.

We all had great fun and learned a lot by listening to the contestants, both in the speech and in the evaluation contests. The next step for the winners (who are now part of the club’s Hall of Fame) will be the Area Contest on 11th April, where they will compete against the other Madrid clubs’ winners for a seat in the Division Contest.

Written by Alberto.

From China With Love

Luciana was our Toastmaster of the Day. She conducted the meeting very cheerfully and efficiently. She had asked the speakers what their favorite festival was, so since we have members from all around the globe there was input from Moldavia, Brazil, the U.S. , Holland, Philippines, China (not to mention downtown Valladolid).bennyIMG_20150218_212922
Anselmo was out first speaker, who executed Project 2 (Organize Your Speech) with a very piquant speech called “Desire, Sex and Love” that had our Toastmaster of the Day rolling around in stitches. He took us through the different “breathtaking emotions that explode within us”…
The next speaker to brave the podium was Lilian with a Project 7 speech (Research Your Topic). Her speech was entitled “Something about sharing the economy” which took us through crowdfunding, AirBnB, car sharing and the importance of trust.
Raquel, Anselmo’s evaluator commended him for a very brave speech but suggested he kept his energy going throughout the speech.
Jim, Lilian’s evaluator, thought it was a good speech but that Lilian should avoid looking at the wall and ceiling for inspiration and that there weren’t enough statistics. (Somehow he got on to the subject of the President of the US….I wonder why)
Eric doing Table Topics impressed us with a blue file with lots of pockets that contained words and a question. His three “victims” (Jaime, Bobby and Julian) had the “opportunity” of answering the question using five of the words.erikIMG_20150218_210049
Carlos, evaluating Eric, congratulated him on the original idea and preparation, but he felt the exercise had been rather complicated.
Maria, our Grammarian then started wrapping up the meeting. She berated us for not using the word of the day enough which was “nuance”.
Alex A. gave us our times, berating two of our speakers for running off at the yellow light when they still had one minute to go.
wpid-img-20150218-wa0006.jpgBobby our visiting DTM from China and General Evaluator, said how much he had liked both us and the meeting. He complemented Luciana on successfully bridging the gap between the speakers and the audience. He then came to the defense of Lilian, pointing out that in his opinion she had in fact done plenty of research which was visible on the graphs she handed out. This had enabled the audience to get the point even better but he felt the content of her visual aids had been overlooked by her evaluator. Luciana was delighted with the present he handed her for our club at the end of his evaluation and Bobby left the stage wishing us all a very happy Year of the Sheep.
Jaime, our President, reminded us of our Speech and Evaluation competition on 4th March and Raquel closed the meeting.

Spring Contests in Toastmasters Madrid

In less than one month, on 4th March, our club will celebrate a special meeting, the Spring Contest (although we are a bit ahead of time this year and the club contest will be celebrated still in Winter). Contests are a great opportunity to put in practice all your public speaking skills, in a special set up. We are still in the safe laboratory where you can explore your limits, but the adrenaline of competing plays a role that everyone should try, and we can assure you that if you try it once, you will repeat.

Area Contest - Jose winningContests are a way to explore your boundaries, and cross them, especially if you win and compete at Area Level (Madrid), Division Level (Spain) or District level (South Europe). It is also a great way to get stage time, which is a fantastic strategy to grow as a speaker, as we all know in Toastmasters. As everything in Toastmasters, contests are plenty of fun and emotions, both for the contestants and for the audience, that get moved by the speakers.

Spring Contest comprises two different contests: International Speech Contest, and Evaluation Contests. The first one consists of 7-minute speeches with all the ingredients to engage the audience into it. A target speaker delivers a speech that the Evaluation contest participants will then evaluate in a 3-4 minutes evaluation.

If you are thinking about taking part in this great event, contact our VP Education a.s.a.p. to secure your seat in the contests. If you still have doubts or need some inspiration, take a look to the following resources: