Meeting Summary, 2nd December 2015

Maxim

„Ask not what Toastmasters can do for your, ask what you can do for Toastmasters.”

Participation

We had the pleasure to have 19 participants in the meeting, including 4 guests who are always welcome in our club. New faces, new situation, everybody is waiting for a … “hm, something is in the air…”, then we are about to start.

Communication

Moritz our club president opened the meeting with his usual energetic, warming up style that generated an excited mood. Asli as our Toastmaster of the Evening (TME) took over the stage then and started with a joke about classical partnership problem but with an unexpected ending, highlighting that in some cases the color of our partner’s hair could matter.  Humour is a good communication device to engage an audience.

Geoffrey gave us the word of the day “ruthless” which was creatively used by the participants.The word of the day allows self-aware speakers to use and play with a concept outside the boundaries of the prepared and the expected. 

The three prepared speakers were Radu, Cathrin and Olaf.  Radu gave us an important view about the bad effects of sugar and made the second step with his project on his Toastmasters journey. Cathrin gave us some hints about self-marketing and explained how could ‘moving slowly’ be factor in it. Olaf delivered his 8th project speech and came up with the task of using visual ads properly.

Our club helps us improve not just our speaking content, but also the fine detail of our grammar.  As Grammarian, Martin pointed out an important side of Toastmasters, the use of  rhetorical devices such as alliteration, anaphora, metaphor and more. Choosing the right rhetorical device is up to us and the same goes for our choices in our everyday life, we choose to wake up early or not. Our theme for the meeting was ‘choices’.

Our Table Topic (impromptu speaking skills) Master for the evening was Bertalan who suggested that we think about Christmas fever in a different way when it comes to buying a present. Our guests stood forward and seized their opportunity to take their first step with impromptu speaking skills. Benjamin, Christian, Marlon and David gave us creative and funny short speeches. We hope to see them next time.

Everything can be reflected upon and improved.  This is the core of learning a new skill.  The prepared speech evaluations were delivered by Christian, Barbara and Moritz.

Natalia, our timer of the evening gave us a precise statistic how we dealt with our speaking minutes.  Timing is key to success with an audience. 

Christian, our ‘ah/um’ counter presented the numbers of our filling words.  Filler words should be eliminated, to give a clear and professional presentation.  Counting them allows us to recognise how we perform, and to reduce this habit next time round.  

Geoffrey gave us a great and constructive overview feedback, the General Evaluation, about the whole meeting so we can improve each detail continuously.

Next Meeting

Or next meeting takes place at Valentino Restaurant, the 16th December, we are looking forward to see you there!  This will be a christmas meeting and christmas meal.  Please sign up here, so we can inform the restaurant of numbers.


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