A Toastmasters meeting is not complete without a Toastmaster of the Day, and this week was the turn of Alex to take the lead role. He braved the audience into addressing the crowd of the 33 people who showed up. Teresa, the General Evaluator, thought Alex showed leadership when he raised his voiced to get the audience attention and established control, just at the beginning of the meeting. Alex spoke with clarity and confidence as he gave an introduction to the 12 guests that were present.
Next on the agenda was the Thought Of The Day, which was conducted by Alberto, who informed us of a book entitled “Thanks for the Feedback” which served to encourage us to received feedback gracefully and not despise them. Which happen to be what Toastmasters is all about.
Just before the speeches, Raquel had some good news to deliver: Toastmasters International has sent a certificate, congratulating Toastmasters Madrid in our 15th anniversary. Great job, Toastmasters Madrid!
There are contradicting views about the Ice Breaker speech being either easy or difficult: there is no doubt that David made it look easy as he took to the stage and enlightened us with a story about his life. After a brief introduction about himself and his job role as an engineer, he spoke about his time travelling in Germany as an Erasmus student. David appeared confident with his nerves well kept under control as he delivered his Ice Breaker speech without notes, and even moving around frequently and using gestures to maintain user attention as noticed by his evaluator Jane.
Alberto on the other hand, performed his ninth project, Persuade With Power, titled “Flying under the Radar”, with emphasis on speaking to persuade. Alberto told an anecdote about his charitable works and challenged us to find ways from time to time to fly under the radar by pretending to be an aeroplane. Maria, his evaluator, congratulated him on using visual aids, and also using anecdotes to develop a strong connection with the audience. Maria then suggested him to incorporate a more emotional touch in his next speech.
In the second part of the meeting, the Table Topics Master, Mabel, randomly picked members to give an impromptu speech about a job that will exist in 2045. Alex seemed to love his future job as a “Nano GPS Rresearcher” to aid people keep track of their partners and socks. Marias motivation for becoming a “Memory Orientation Surgeon” in 2045 was to meet the demand for increased life expectancy and improve life of the elderly.
All in all it was a successful meeting, the Grammarian Ana, was pleased that her selected “Word of the day” Opprobrium was used numerous times. The Timekeeper, Juliet, was also delighted that she did not have cut short any speeches. All participants performed brilliantly. And most importantly constructive feedback were given from which participants would fine-tune their Public Speaking skills.
Written by Christian
The Table Topic Master, Jose, was an excellent moment of teamwork as well. Aware of the importance of working with others, Jose increased the participation component with a topic related to the Master of Ceremonies in a Conference, where the one of the main workshop leaders failed. The impromptu speakers had to to find why another different topic would still fit in the conference. We enjoyed a lot with speeches, such as, the Art of Walking, the Lady Gaga fame or the history of Harry Potter. We enjoyed a lot, where the evaluation of the motivated participants and Table Topic Master were fine, so I would like to say congratulations to all!!
To summarize the meeting, our Toastmaster of the day, our Grammarian, our Timekeeper and our General Evaluator, demonstrate us that the prime advantage to working as a team is the ability to combine skills and talents. That is, we benefit from a wide array of skills and talents that no single member could possess alone. Thus, our outstanding meeting was an exemplary teamwork.
The agenda contained one Thought of the Day by Mabel, one project speech (number #5) of the 
Eric’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.
To 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 
On March 4th we held our Club speech and evaluation