Recap: Our Meeting of July 9th, 2013

This was the first MITC gathering in the new Toastmasters year. Martin S. as our new Club President welcomed the fifteen members and four guests who had come to celebrate a “Summer of Success” (meeting theme by Alexander).

Among the guests, there was Jenni as a first time visitor and a friend of René’s. For Viktor it was the second MITC meeting as well as for Ankur who had visited our club together with come colleagues from Mannheim Business School last year. We also welcomed Stefan as a guest from the German speaking “Rhetorikclub Mannheim”.

Martin E. as Toastmaster of the Evening skillfully introduced the agenda and the roles of the evening. Despite some short term changes he and VP Ed Alexander had managed to prepare and run the meeting brilliantly.

During warm-up we learned that it was rather pretentious (word of the day by Steven) to pray for winning the lottery if you fail to “buy a bloody ticket” (joke of the evening by Oliver. In her Thought of the Day Wenrong reminded us that “You can have virtually anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want” (quote by Ray Dalio)

Martin E. as TME pointed out that we were going to witness as many as 16 speeches that night. This was due to the fact that:

“Most speakers have four speeches:
What they have prepared,
what they actually say,
what they wish they had said,
and what they are quoted as saying.”
(Quoted from “The Complete Speechmaker”)

Lorna was our first prepared speaker. She completed Project No. 3 (Get to the Point) with her informative presentation “Why vaccinate” in which she delivered some remarkable figures and statistics on the topic.

Rolf was completing the Advanced Manual “Humorously Speaking” with his speech “Surprise, Surprise”. In it, he reassured us in an ironical way that there are no serious privacy risks whatsoever on the internet.

Next, Günter delivered the draft version of his Tall Tale Story “Evolution”, which he was preparing for a contest during RRR4 (Fourth Rhineland Rhetoric Retreat in Borschemich). In it Günter shared his personal experiences with the “big bang”, life as a one-cell organism and women’s soccer. A blast for everyone in the room!

Finally, Jazzmin presented the short story “Lamb to the slaughter” as her first project from the Advanced Manual “Interpretive Reading”. A thrilling crime story involving both stunning domestic violence and culinary delicacies.

The third part of the meeting was led by Jeff as General Evaluator. He introduced Pradeep, Alexander, Martin S. and Perrine as evaluators and had some valuable suggestions for improvement for those members who had roles.

Before the formal meeting was closed by President Marin S. and we continued the evening cosily on Mario’s terrace, the following dates to mark on our calendars where announced:

July 23rd –> next MITC club meeting
November 15th – 17th –> “District 59 Fall Conference” in Budapest