Tag Archives: visitors

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.

20150429_214627The 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.

20150429_214702Eric’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.

20150429_203001To 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.

 

From China With Love

Luciana was our Toastmaster of the Day. She conducted the meeting very cheerfully and efficiently. She had asked the speakers what their favorite festival was, so since we have members from all around the globe there was input from Moldavia, Brazil, the U.S. , Holland, Philippines, China (not to mention downtown Valladolid).bennyIMG_20150218_212922
Anselmo was out first speaker, who executed Project 2 (Organize Your Speech) with a very piquant speech called “Desire, Sex and Love” that had our Toastmaster of the Day rolling around in stitches. He took us through the different “breathtaking emotions that explode within us”…
The next speaker to brave the podium was Lilian with a Project 7 speech (Research Your Topic). Her speech was entitled “Something about sharing the economy” which took us through crowdfunding, AirBnB, car sharing and the importance of trust.
Raquel, Anselmo’s evaluator commended him for a very brave speech but suggested he kept his energy going throughout the speech.
Jim, Lilian’s evaluator, thought it was a good speech but that Lilian should avoid looking at the wall and ceiling for inspiration and that there weren’t enough statistics. (Somehow he got on to the subject of the President of the US….I wonder why)
Eric doing Table Topics impressed us with a blue file with lots of pockets that contained words and a question. His three “victims” (Jaime, Bobby and Julian) had the “opportunity” of answering the question using five of the words.erikIMG_20150218_210049
Carlos, evaluating Eric, congratulated him on the original idea and preparation, but he felt the exercise had been rather complicated.
Maria, our Grammarian then started wrapping up the meeting. She berated us for not using the word of the day enough which was “nuance”.
Alex A. gave us our times, berating two of our speakers for running off at the yellow light when they still had one minute to go.
wpid-img-20150218-wa0006.jpgBobby our visiting DTM from China and General Evaluator, said how much he had liked both us and the meeting. He complemented Luciana on successfully bridging the gap between the speakers and the audience. He then came to the defense of Lilian, pointing out that in his opinion she had in fact done plenty of research which was visible on the graphs she handed out. This had enabled the audience to get the point even better but he felt the content of her visual aids had been overlooked by her evaluator. Luciana was delighted with the present he handed her for our club at the end of his evaluation and Bobby left the stage wishing us all a very happy Year of the Sheep.
Jaime, our President, reminded us of our Speech and Evaluation competition on 4th March and Raquel closed the meeting.

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