Tag Archives: madrid

Making your voice heard

Our toastmaster of the day, John, started the session explaining the organisation objectives. His aim was to clarify expectations and inform our guests. Amongst them, we have a former member of a Canadian toastmaster club, an ex-member of Ericsson club, the president of Standing Ovation club, three visitors from Germany, a group of engineers from Airbus and of course some locals. All of them interested on knowing what Toastmaster is all about. Around 30 people filled Anthony’s place.

Eric, as Grammarian, proposed two expression as word of the day: “at the helm” and “only a matter of time”. Julian, the guy with the Italian name and the Australian passport as he was introduced, used both of them one minute later while explaining his Timekeeper role. That was quick!

Victor, who has just joined the club, delivered a Thought of the day speech around the usage of painting and architecture through civilizations. He used plenty of visual aids to demonstrated how art is a priceless mirror of the society at a given time.

Maria, apart from being the General evaluator, delivered a Thought of the day speech around Toastmaster motto “where leaders are made”. Is there anybody out there who still doubts that all great leaders are great communicators?

The two main speakers of the day were Ana and Pilar. Ana’s “Do It Yourself” speech inspired us to consider DIY as a source of self-satisfaction. The speech included tips to help us get started: use pinterest to discover projects and visit the DIY fair celebrated twice a year in Madrid. Pilar’s “Home is where the heart is” was a call to spend time discovering your local area. She explained us how her plans to relocate to Bristol have caused her to spend her summer holidays visiting Alicante’s wonders: Santa Pola lighthouse, Tabarca island, …

Jim and Raul were the speeches evaluators. Both of them gave precise improvement points using constructive feedback, which is Toastmasters trademark.

Finally, Christian, Juliet, Jack, Ana, Jim, Jane and John were the “victims” of Alberto, the table topic master. He made them participate in a “Secret Santa” event as part of a company party. What would be your acceptance speech after receiving a “How to be nice and make friends” manual?

I should also mention that we had a special group of guests. A family having an early dinner help everybody demonstrate how important is to project the voice to the whole room in order to be heard. Their participation on this regard was priceless.

Written by Javier.

August in Madrid

After two outdoors meetings in Retiro Park, we came back to our usual venue: Anthony’s Place.

Our new Sergeant at Arms, Jesus, who opened our first meeting in August, had imagined a poor attendance, but we had plenty of guests, and many of them were “Toastmasters”. Because some members of other Toastmasters clubs in Madrid (Excelencia, Standing Ovation…), who missed the Toastmasters environment during their clubs’ “summer breaks”, attended and took part in the meeting. And Allan visited Toastmasters Madrid too!! Allan is a member of two Toastmasters clubs in London, who was spending his vacation in Madrid.

Masha, the Toastmaster of the Day, had thoroughly prepared her role. She had written all the participants in advance, asking for their favourite quotation. Thanks to herm we learnt useful thoughts about success, mistakes… while we knew better our fellow Toastmasters.

Before starting with the prepared speeches, we attended an introduction of our supporting roles: Grammarian and Timekeeper.

Juliette, the Grammarian, chose PRACTICABLE, as the word of the day. It turned to be a great success, due to the amount of speakers who used it during our meeting.

We are happy when a new member steps up as Victor did. He is the newest member of our club and volunteered to be Timekeeper.

But if, somebody talked about time, it was Mabel. From the very beginning of her second speech, she made us notice how we experiment the pass of time, and how talk about time: “we find, waste, spend… time”. Mabel´s evaluator, Alex, realized that time existed for him too, when Victor, the timekeeper, showed the red card, and was about to interrupt his evaluation.

The second speech of the evening was a “Demonstration speech”, from an Advanced Manual, that Eric delivered successfully. He pointed out that while dancing “every move you make, means a lot, every step has a meaning, and remember, somebody can be watching”. Raúl Martín was watching him, with attention. During his evaluation, Raúl congratulated Eric for his magnificent body language, and how successfully “he did the most difficult thing on stage”: keeping the audience attention.

Instead of a third speech, we had an Educational Session led by Luci. In her path to become Advance Leader, she taught us that “goal setting” is in human nature, we all make new year´s resolutions…but how do we go from goal to reality? We heard some ideas and proposals. Luci suggested that we can use the tools we already have: Easy-speak allows us to make our communication and leadership goals available.

After the speeches, Ana Virtudes, led an original Table Topics session: The four victims created a story that began with our rock star, Julian. After him, Javier, tried to sell a ticket for a concert, but Nacho preferred to stay at home with his Dalmatian print blanket. The story ended when Allan invited all of us to attend a fancy dress party!!! Hard job for Alisha, the Table Topics Evaluator, to find room for improvement, but she did! And for all the participants.

Our General evaluator was Jim, who evaluated the whole meeting, and those participants who hadn’t been evaluated so far. He specially praised Alisha’s effort: “Excellent, from Excelencia”.

The meeting ended with Masha requesting members to upload a picture of each one to Easy-Speak (the tool we use to plan meetings and club events). We all concur, as our final quotation, that “Easy-speak is more important than LinkedIn, Twitter or even Facebook”.

Written by Raquel

Together As One

Our second consecutive meeting in Retiro Park saw Toastmaster Excelencia and Toastmaster Madrid combine as a joint group.

Mauro, the Toastmaster of the day who spoke Spanish, English and Italian added a trilingual touch to the meeting. First in welcoming guests, and then throughout the leading roles of the meeting, he alternated between the 3 languages. After the guests had introduced themselves, Ana and Adolfo explained their respective roles as the timekeeper and grammarian.

For Thought of the Day, Carlos treated us to a soothing music as he talked about music. Next was Ana who spoke about the book “Finding Your Element”.

The first speaker was David who talked about his life experience, breaking up with his girlfriend and going to Camino de Santiago on a trip that lasted 25 days. David used hand gestures, and maintained eye contact through his speech. His added humour left the audience begging for more.

Second to deliver his speech was Yago who was smooth, and appeared calm and collected as he talked about the “meaning of words”. Taking full advantage of the stage he moved around and spoke in a convincing voice. Pedro, his evaluator, commended him on his in-depth explanation.

At this time of recession, Maria thought it was a good idea to base her speech on job applications. In her speech, she suggested tips to succeed in a job interview. Maria used visual aids and lots of humour to present her information, needless to say that it was enjoyable.

The last prepared speaker, Josephine centred her speech on grooming. She shared the stage with a colleague who role-played various grooming routines as Josephine talked. This made her speech entertaining and eye-catching. From a public speaking point of view, her speech was humorous, loud and clear and engaging thanks to the role-playing.

Alex led the table topics with intriguing questions like personal relationships with partners. Pilar and Nacho were among the unsuspecting members of the audience to participate in the impromptu speeches but responded equally well to the questions they faced.

Written by Christian

Ethical Meeting

A good number of fellow Toastmasters and guests gathered together for our first meeting of the new Toastmasters year, which became the perfect refuge to escape from the heat. The news were even before the meeting started, with our new Sargent at Arms, Ana, kicking the meeting off and giving the lead to our Founder and Distinguished Toastmasters, Jim Dodson, who acted as Toastmaster of the Day, serving as a good example of how to exercise that role in an optimal way.

The speakers and evaluators roster provided a good combination of novelty and experience. Julian gave an artistic Thought of the Day, Maravillas talked about her professional twist and Christian shared with us his key learning experience in their Icebreakers, while Marina’s speech about Ethics made us reflect. Alex, Masha and Alex formed a dream team to evaluate the speeches in a way that everybody learnt something, like the “Virtual Image” concept that Aline shared with us or the importance of keeping the structure and the sentences simple in a speech.

The Table Topics session was driven by Pilar who, based on her work experience, and Marina’s speech, challenged the speakers with questions about Ethics in our daily life, which was positively valued by the audience, as the evaluator Ana pointed out. The auxiliary roles were performed really good by Rosa (timekeeper) and Jonas as Grammarian, who chose the word of the day “Pull Off” and paid extra attention to the usage of the English Grammar, apart from the control of the filler words.

Written by Nacho.

Motivation

Weren’t you able to attend our June 17th meeting? If that’s the case, keep reading to know what you missed.

Being an international group means that our guest usually come from all over the world. This time we had people from US, New Zealand, Colombia and of course some Spanish people. Around 30 people filled Anthony’s place back room.

John was the Toastmaster of the Day. He chose music as the general theme for the meeting, but accidentally, motivation became the common thread of the session. In any case, we got Pink Floyd playing during all the evaluation pauses.

Christian introduced us to Napoleon Hill work: “the Law of Success”. A book aimed to identify the secret of the success of self-made rich men as Henry Ford or Thomas Edison. Something worthy to be checked out!

Raquel explained us who the new club officers are. Quite impressive team, to be honest. We are taking our new members development so seriously that we have now two VP of Mentorship.

The two main Speakers of the day were Alberto and Eric. Alberto’s “Earn your Black Belt” speech inspired us to remember that “where there is a will, there is a way”. Rely on your internal energy and do not give up. Eric’s “Chants, affirmations, songs… and haka” electrified our unconscious mind. Eric started with an impressive haka that left us breathless and I mean all of us, including him. But 2 minutes later he was singing, could you believe it?

Eva and Julian were the speeches evaluators. Both of them demonstrated why feedback is the heart of the Toastmasters Educational program.

Finally, Jane, Benito, Pablo, and Alex were the “victims” of Juliet, the table topic master. She made them communicate difficult information while motivating the audience. Could you imagine having to explain in your company that a new company rule force employees to dress according to their salary?