Calvin was the Toastmaster of the evening and chaired our meeting on August 28th. As usual the first part of the evening was a warming up for everyone.
MartinS presented the word of the day “cloud-cuckoo-land” which means not to be realistic at all but to think that things which are completely impossible might happen. With a short and striking joke Jeff enlightened us about the three words no one wants to hear when committing adultery: “Honey I’m home!”. A great picture by Calvin described the small but all the more important difference between hell and heaven. Continue reading “No need to live in cloud-cuckoo-land of public speaking, just do it!”
“Trash-“Toastmasters on Tue 31/07:. Missed it? Lucky you!
René closed a strange meeting of Rhetorikclub Mannheim and Mannheim International Toastmasters, which had lasted far too long. In fact, there hadn’t been a single contribution that an award would have been worth it — the election of the best speeches had to be cancelled. René had taken over from JP who was general evaluator. In his opinion, the evaluations could had been shorter than 5-7 minutes. His comments were striking – a lot of criticism and little praise for the other roles such as timekeeper of the evening, thought of the day or Toastmasters of the evening.
MartinS tried to find at least one positive aspect of the speech of his namesake. After all, with „Cycling in the City“ MartinE had found an issue, that some people are rather hazy about. The evaluation for Harald by Gaetano was not that positive. He complained that Harald blinked constantly, occasionally said “Amen to that” and did not even know the names of important politicians. Fortunately the break before that had provided a bit of entertainment.
It felt like it was for 75th time when MartinE spoke and he was far from a smashing performance. Not only that he started with the very end of the speech. He even screwed up the boring joke with the Porsche driver and cyclist. For half a minute he didn’t have any idea what to say and everyone could enjoy the silence. Earlier Harald raised our hopes for an interesting speech at least briefly with “The political opposition from 1949 to the Present”. But soon he was unable to cope with this demanding topic. Then he did what he really is good at – drinking schnaps. At least he offered a drink to every Toastmaster too.
All this followed on from the impromptu speeches, boring as ever presented by Peter. Whether “If that’s the answer, I wanna have back my problem!”, “I do not have flaws, they are all special effects.” Or “No alcohol isn’t a solution either“.” – Once again all these issues demonstrated how primitive the Toastmasters evenings in Mannheim have become now.
Of course no one understood the thougt of the day. Nobody understood the the thought of the day. If I remember correctly, René had come up with something bad about women, claiming the saying was from Clint Eastwood. Rene had presented a quote about women, allegedly said by Clint Eastwood – a likely story! Without a punching line at all was JPs dirty joke. The anecdote about a priest hearing a young lady’s confession still makes me blush with shame. So René – being the President of Mannheim Int. Toastmasters and Toastmaster of the evening – was able to welcome the disinterested members and guests and opened the meeting.
Caution: absurd / politically incorrect / wrong agenda – Trash Toastmasters on Tue 31/07 (bilingual)
Mannheim International Toastmasters and Rhetorikclub Mannheim meet on Tue 31/07/2012 to “Trash” Toastmasters, a Toastmasters evening of a different kind. For two hours we throw our principles to the wind and forget about our expectations for a successful meeting . . .
Let’s work through the agenda in reverse order, starting with the end of the meeting and the evaluations! Of course the principles of appreciation will find little attention and difficult issues such as politics / sex / religion can be part of your speech.
How does one evaluate a speech that was not even held? Be creative and think about small tasks for the speaker (e.g. showing bad speaking skills, dancing on the table) or don’t necessarily focus on a positive feedback. Accept the challenge and present a speech which surprise effects were already announced in the evaluation.
You can find our agenda and enrol in the meeting here (presentations can be held in German and English).