Kindness [Meeting report of 2020-09-22]

Our club meeting on Tuesday, 22 September had an evening theme of “kindness”.

“Practice kindness every day with everybody and you will realize that you are already in heaven now”. Jack Karouac

We had a high-class and exciting meeting, with speech projects from three very talented and experienced club members. We were delighted to again have a number of international guests from India, the UK, and Tanzania. This is in my eyes one of the exciting pluses of meeting online, and we invite any international guests to come and join us as club members as long as we are online. We also were happy to welcome Manuel Gauss, the current president of the Heidelberg Toastmaster club, who added to the club evening by taking over the role of evaluator.

Speaker number one was Poorana. He gave an inspiring and moving speech, talking about a devastating event in his life that taught him something about recovering from trauma… that is, the power in finding something relevant, meaningful and good even in the worst of events. The second speaker was Jan-Phillip (JP), who told us in a most vivid manner of his enjoyment of crime novels and talked about two of his favorite characters from these thrillers. His was a highly entertaining speech, even if the content was far from our evening theme of kindness ;). The third speaker, Martin, had a speech project that involved not only a speech but also a question and answer period. The theme of his speech was “how to find peace of mind”. The question and answer period was lively and challenged Martin to go into more depth on the main points of his presentation.

The three evaluators for the evening were Manuel, Yingqi, and Oliver. The level of evaluations was also very high, and each of the evaluators did a commendable job in balancing observations about strengths and adding concrete points where the speakers could improve.

As Toastmaster of the evening, I had the opportunity to share a number of quotes on the personal and interpersonal benefits of just being kind to others. I felt that the theme was well received by all present, and for me personally this is one of the great strengths of our club: the members actively care about each other and we support each other in our personal and professional growth. And, this of course works best in a climate of “kindness”.

Thanks to all who attended for making this evening so worthwhile. I am looking forward to seeing you all at the next meeting in two weeks. And of course, we would love to have guests and potential new members, so bring any friends or colleagues you think might be able to profit from Toastmasters.

Our next meeting will be on 13/10/2020 at 19:15.

Here is the zoom link to join us: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/980755286?pwd=Znhwc3dCS1Y3Q1VMUFRQVzhsaHB4dz09

Best wishes,
Jeff Gordon.
(club President)