Tag Archives: public speaking

What was your favourite toy as a child?

This was the question that our Toastmaster of the Day, Teresa, had asked all participants while preparing the first meeting on February. She used the answers to introduce members with roles. Therefore we all were able to remember our first bikes, skates, dolls and “mecanos”…

wpid-2015-02-04-20.39.19.jpg.jpegAnd, not only we discovered Anselmo’s favourite toy as a kid, but he also shared with us his favourite book; because, the meeting agenda contained a first short talk known as “Book of the day”. Anselmo related how “Our Ancestors” by Italo Calvino made a long-lasting impression on him, since the first time he read the book: “I thought what Don Quixote must have thought”. Prepared speeches are always the core part of every Toastmasters meeting, and on February, 4th we recorded them for the first time.

Two of our youngest members of the Club, Alex Alves and Pilar gave their projects number 5 and 6 from the Competent Communication Manual. Alex conveyed a speech full of passion when he related his experiences as a volunteer in Ethiopia with the NGO “Living Meki”. We learnt that we can make this world a better place, that volunteers receive much more than they give. But, when Alex fulfilled his body language objective singing and dancing “A ella le gusta la gasolina”, we learnt and we will never forget that Ethiopians are really fond of reggaeton music.

wpid-20150204_204933.jpgMusic, music was in the title of Pilar’s speech “What music means to us”, but mainly in the content: she explained her feelings towards this artistic expression, scientific facts related to music, she played the guitar and she sang, even including the Word of the Day: Fringe. Our Grammarian José was shocked.

The Table Topic session is always the funniest and most creative part of the meeting. The Table Topics Master, Aline, had announced on her Twitter account, she felt especially creative when she was preparing the questions.

We were delighted when Mario, a first time guest, acted as if he were a tennis ball.

But this meeting had something new too. Toastmasters Madrid held a short Awards Ceremony for those members who show commitment and have done 5 speeches or more. This recognition will become a tradition in our club. But beyond celebrating our past success, we are focused on the future. As an incentive to keep on learning and improving, Alex, Pilar, Alberto, Lilian, José and Aline received a homemade Certificate and a Toastmasters International pin. Our Club President, Jaime led a warming and friendly presentation, in which members who could not attend (Guillermo, Ana V., Javier and Irene) were also recognized for achieving such an important milestone in their Communication Track.

Lilian and Alberto

Lilian and Alberto

Aline and Jose

Aline and Jose

Pilar and Alex

Pilar and Alex

Written by Raquel

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:

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.

New Year… New Website

Welcome to the new web for the first Toastmasters Club in Spain, Toastmasters Madrid. Its content has been created to be useful both for the visitors that arrive to our web curious about what Toastmasters is about, and for the members that are already part of our club. The main idea behind the change is to make it a live page, with more interaction and more frequent updates.

It contains information about the different tracks we have in Toastmasters, about the kind of people that belong to the club, our meetings, how to join Toastmasters, or who are now the current officers and what they do.

As an image is worth more than a thousand words, we have also included a Resources section, where you can find some speeches texts and videos. If you have any speech online (written or recorded), share it with us and we will publish them.

If you are already a member, the new Members Area contain useful information for your membership and evolution in Toastmasters, as well as some resources for the officers. We have also included some historical information that we have collected about the club (archaeology in the files).

Banner-ToastmastersMadrid-Since2000

The most important new feature in this website is what you are reading: a blog. We will use the blog to communicate news about the club both for the club members and for the rest of our visitors. We expect you (yes, you!) to collaborate in this blog whenever you feel like by writing meeting summaries, or creating specific posts about any related topic. Note that you have a small form to subscribe to the blog updates in your e-mail.

Last but not least, as we always like to do it in Toastmasters, some feedback and credit. All feedback is welcome, so take a look to the web, and let us know any idea you may have to make it better. And let us thank the team that has created this page by giving ideas and creating content: Luciana, Fabiola, Jorge, Guillermo, Susana, Pilar, José, Jane, Jim, Raquel, Jaime, Javier and Nacho.