Tag Archives: madrid

What is behind a name?

Eric opened the meeting inviting our guests to introduce themselves. Therefore, we met Felix, Veronica from Venezuela, Darío from Dominican Republic, Elena and Lee from Korea. The last two names are not real names but easier for us to remember than the real Korean names of their bearers.

Names were very important in our last club meeting: Eric had thoroughly looked for the meaning and popular bearers of the names of all the participants in the meeting. We learnt popularity statistics and that most of us share the Biblical origin of our names.

We all loved how members who recently joined our club (Maria Mirat, Christian, Maravillas, Juliet and Ana), played a very important role in the first part of the meeting.

During the introduction of her role as Timekeeper, Maria Mirat made us remember the story of the “Men in Grey” from the novel “Momo” by Michael Ende. Those “Men in Grey” represented the “Time Saving Bank” and promoted the idea of time saving.
Christian, our Grammarian, chose “Impeccable” as the Word of the Day. And he confessed that he had just learned that the Spanish word was very similar.

Just before the prepared speeches, Maravillas recommended us to see a film: “The good lie”, in a longer than usual, but very interesting Thought of the day.

Two prepared speeches were Icebreakers. The Icebreaker is the first speech in the Competent Communication Manual, the first milestone for every member in her Toastmasters journey.

Juliet, the first speaker, remembered with emotion, her first working experiences in the city of Jos (Nigeria). She taught us how we can influence and touch lives with something small and trivial: Chocolate!!

The second prepared speech of the meeting was Ana’s Icebreaker. With “the pets of my life”, she presented the different stages of her life, her family, the period of time she spent in the US… and how animals have always had a prominent role.

Masha is nearly Competent Communicator!! She delivered her 8th speech on last Wednesday. With her magnificent body language, vocal variety and all the visual aids she was requested to use to reach the objectives of her project, we learned “The true story of Matryoshka”. According to Masha, originally Russian Matryoshkas consisted on 7 figures. Each one was painted in a certain rainbow colour, from red to violet, in the same way that the 7 chakras or 7 life force-energies in yogi tradition have a corresponding colour.

When speakers are finished, evaluators take their turn:

Both Teresa and Raquel focused on the opportunity that new members give the rest of us to know them better with their Icebreakers.
Jim evaluated Masha and he pointed out that “as always, it is a pleasure to listen to you”.

Julian, the Table Topic Master, gave us the opportunity to travel through time (as Rosa and David did), and through space, because Elena flied over Ibiza. During Table Topics Evaluation, Nacho focused on the great Rosa´s performance and that Elena “gave us more than a short speech of a minute”.

Before the meeting is finished, our supporting roles (Grammarian and Timekeeper) gave their reports:

According to Christian, paying 0.10 € for each filler word is always something to celebrate, as we are helping others with the money we get.
Maria divided us in three groups: the frugal, the moderate and the talkative ones, depending on how long we talked.

General evaluator is always the last role of each meeting. Jane, Gift of God, as her name means, pointed out that we had struggled against noise and heat during the meeting. Something that the new Club Committee has to face for future sessions, next one on 17th of June.

Written by Raquel.

Thanks For the Feedback

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

Teamwork

Toastmasters is a Communication and Leadership Club, but also the best Teamwork Club, where their members deliver fascinating speeches to their targeted audience. Raquel, our Toastmaster of the Day, put speakers together last Wednesday to accomplish these magic goals, that is, members and evaluators outperform communication and leadership by teamwork.

Javier, our first speaker, delighted us talking about “things are not just black or white”, where he could explain many things of his life. However, he preferred to talk us about his personal story when he was in a leadership training in the UK. He explained us that he was encouraged to choose among “doer, thinker, talker or guardian” to define himself. So, the Ice Breaker goals were successfully achieved, as Pilar assessed in an evaluation as great as the speech! The second speaker, Masha was also amazing and it was absolutely validated by Jim, her evaluator. The “Fight or Flight” speech was a demonstration of courage towards facing public speaking. Masha delighted us with the best methods to reach a great speech in public, but she concluded that the most important key is “practice, practice and practice”. Nacho was the third speaker with an Educational Session part of his High Performance Leadership manual, and was evaluated by Luciana. He talked us about the wonderful word of this blog, that is “Teamwork”. The topic of this speech was the Division Conference, the great meeting in Spain where the best speakers enchanted the audience by their abilities and great skills. He explained us that the aim of a successful teamwork: the motivation of the great team, and the participation of each member in all details of the conference, where everybody wants to aid to reach the proposed goals. The result of the teamwork was an amazing event.

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.

Written by David Martín.

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.

The 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.

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.

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.

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 President and the other Committee Roles). Elections are near and you can be a canddate!!

Written by Pilar.

Happy 15th Birthday, Toastmasters Madrid

Today 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Toastmasters Madrid – Public Speaking and Leadership Club

Where Leaders Are Made