Category Archives: Competent Communication

Meeting Summary – 21/01/2015

It was a cold January afternoon, so we gathered at the main room at Anthony’s Place. The meeting started on time, and we were glad to welcome a lot of guests! Ana even came after having seen Toastmasters International Speech Contest winner “I see something in you…”

Meeting on 21.01.2015 Thoughts of the day made us reflect, in different ways: Alex Hristov illustrated with a chain of examples how supporting something almost always has the potential of making somebody else uncomfortable; and Damián Alcolea had a simple, but heartfelt message for us about something we can all do more often: say thank you.

Anselmo Sainz Bengoechea did his first speech, his Icebreaker, and left us all open-mouthed with a delightful representation of his storytelling abilities. His use of gestures and body language reinforced his tale of a childhood dream that continued into adulthood.

Jaime Irastorza, our President, became Competent Communicator with an inspiring speech #10 that relied on emotions and memories most of us will have –key to success! He took us all to our childhood days, by showing toys most of us played with; and touched our “potato” reminding us that we should jump in a rain puddle once in a while. Congratulations Jaime!

Grammarian Teresa Ortega, and timer, Maria Marjevscaja were both “nicely bossy”, and our Toastmaster of the Day, Raquel García, was faultless!

An exhaustive and thorough evaluation by General evaluator Jane Kinnear closed the meeting, reviewing the job of evaluators and giving us all a tip: if you cannot think of something to criticize, quickly ask people sitting next to you!

This meeting was one of starting and closing a phase in a Toastmasters’ journey, one of encountering friends we haven’t seen in a while, one of welcoming lots of people with interest in joining our little family… in the end, a nice melting pot, and a common goal, develop communication and leadership skills, while having a good time!

Written by Luci

Meeting Summary – 07/01/2015

The day after the three Wise Men visited Madrid to distribute presents among all Toastmasters, we had the first meeting of the year with the participation of 18 members and 3 guests, not bad considering the date. The reward that we got for attending was good pieces of learning about public speaking.

The agenda had for us two Thoughts of the Day, delivered by Julian and John, and two project speeches of the Competent Communication Manual: an Icebreaker by Rosa and the project #7 by Alberto, who had to present his research about a topic. Finally, the Table Topics Session had four participant speakers improvising answers around the topic of unexpected Christmas Presents. Let´s summarize what we could learn out from the participations.

Julian engaged the audience right from the start speaking with a topic almost everyone relates: the new year resolutions, this time with a twist, the negative aspects of having them. This unexpected perspective caught our attention and he enriched with humour his speech.

John did a review of the acclaimed TV Series Breaking Bad, no spoiler intended, which he had recently discovered. He used it to speak about how a loser transforms himself into a powerful person. John provided a perfect example of speech flow and voice projection.

The Icebreaker from Rosa had us getting to know many facettes about her life, from family and traditions to her professional life as medicine doctor. As soon as she eased into the first lines of the speech the passion and confidence when speaking about herself were evident. She managed therefore to master this important milestone for a public speaker.

Alberto spoke about the problem of longitude measurement at sea and the invention of the maritime chronometer. He started with a powerful visual hook, imitating a spyglass with a rolled pirate flag, in order to engage the audience into the more technical aspects that would come later. With clear examples and data he managed to have the audience remembering the key facts about his speech.

The table topics session had Jaime presenting the theme of Christmas Presents, then describing specific situations so that everyone in the audience had some context and seconds to find an answer. The participants who were then picked up and called to the stage, Wanda, Maria, Alex and Lucía, managed to develop entertaining answers within the time alloted of 1 to 2 minutes.

On the evaluation side, Eva offered a good point for Alberto to enhance his good research speech by suggesting to include personal anectodes the audience could relate with. Nacho stressed the good points of Rosa´s speech in order to encourage her to keep delivering on stage.

We had good feedback on the use of grammar by Jane and Jim, as general evaluator, recommended the timer to address each participant in the session by name when reporting the times.

Written by Jaime.

Meeting Summary – 17/12/2014

Public Speaking is a challenge for almost anybody without any speech disorder, so imagine how it can be if you must practice that suffering stuttering. This was a common idea that came to our mind when the first guest introduced himself, Ben, from Israel, and told us about the club he is creating back home in the Israeli Stuttering Association, where he is the president. This visiting Toastmasters also participated as Timekeeper of the Day.

The meeting agenda contained one Icebreaker (first speech in the club) and two projects number 4 from the Competent Communication Manual (“How To Say It”), so there were many good examples on the usage of the language in oral communications to effectively communicate your message in a specific context. Just one from each speaker:

“Expect nothing, appreciate everything” (Tony Bryant)

“Your life is in your friend’s hands” (Jesús Clemente)

“You are skeptic or you are a Harry Potter like me” (Maria Marjevscaia)

The two first ones make you reflect, and survive the speech itself. They are powerful to stick the message in the audience’s brain. The last one had a specific purpose during her speech: connecting the audience to the speech, to the speaker, and introducing a piece of humour with the reference to Harry Potter.

The club’s founder, and Distinguished Toastmaster, Jim Dodson, offered us an interesting Table Topics session, and served as inspiration for future Table Topics Master in the future. He commented some news, making everybody be part of the story and form an opinion about it, and suddenly dropped the question to the victims. The main advantage of this technique is that you make everybody be prepared for the question, so that everybody participates in a way, and the speaker is ready for the mini-speech.

Written by Nacho