Category: Members

“Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal and new life”, Janine de Giovanni, an American journalist and professor, refers to Easter as the time for a new start and celebrating life.

Oliver, the presiding officer for the evening, welcomed our guests, Jon and Mike, who know the club already. Firstly, JP reported about the project of the Competent Leader (CL) manual. He shared with the 12 participants the slides and link how to get credit for taking up roles in Toastmaster meeting. The process starts from now on. Members should decided before the meeting which role they are going to take and ask another member for feedback during the meeting. This can also be tracked in easy speak. The idea is to motivate the new members to take up roles in the meetings to make the meetings more lively, to facilitate the organization of the meetings, and to learn leadership skills by doing so.

The word of the day “halcyon” was given by Sybille who wished everyone halcyon days during the Easter holidays.
Halcyon: characterized by happiness, great success, and prosperity : golden —often used to describe an idyllic time in the past that is remembered as better than today

The word was used by Florian and Craig several times.

In his thought of the evening, Jeff focused on Easter as the time of a new beginning like the buds renewing in spring time.  He gave the following quote from Barbara Shur :

You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.”

Sybille, as toastmaster of the evening, introduced her team taking over various functions, Mike spontaneously took over the role as General Evaluator, Kala was again the timer and Uli signed up as Ah-Counter. To address the theme of the evening Sybille presented some for us unusual Easter traditions, like the giant omelet. This is offered on Easter Monday in the town of Haux in southern France to 1000 people and contains more than 15,000 eggs. It is said the tradition refers to Napoleon and his army.

Our table topics master Jeff presented four questions:

1. What is your favorite Easter memory? Kevin shared with us a lovely story that being home with is family is the best.
2. Tell us one thing you would like to accomplish this spring. Our guest Jon took this question, sharing his wish to start swimming regularly after a long pause do to the pandemic and some health issues.
3. What would be the most amazing thing for you to find in an Easter egg? Uli dreams of finding a new job in her Easter egg and shared with us some of her endeavors so far.
4. What do you appreciate about changing seasons? Kala, originally from India, is used to warm weather but has learned to appreciate the various seasons here. They all have their meaning.

Before the break Sybille informed about the Easter tradition in Poland. On Easter Monday people try to drench each other with buckets of water. Legend says girls who get soaked on Easter Monday will marry within the year.

We had two prepared speeches. In his path presentation mastery, Florian delivered speech five of level 1, evaluation and feedback. He incorporated the feedback of his speech “Doing good better” and repeated the speech focusing on visualization and body language. JP, his evaluator stated a great improvement.

Managing a difficult audience. Craig’s task was to practice the skills needed to address audience challenges and handle interruptions professionally. He delivered a 12 minute speech with the title: Legend.Iconic.Colossal: the Earth Dragon. The speech was excellently presented. Obviously, members found it hard to interrupt this fluent speech. However, Craig reacted professionally to the few interruptions by Uli and Kevin. His speech was evaluated by Ksenja.

Mike rounded off the meeting with his general evaluation. He like the structured meetings and the atmosphere. He praised Oliver for putting the agendas together – as VP Education this is always a very demanding task.

Finally, the performance of the evening was awarded: the best evaluator was Ksenja, the best table topic speaker Uli and the best prepared speech was delivered by Florian.

“Easter us the only time of the year when it is o.k. to put all your eggs in one basket.”

(Thanks to Sybille for this great recap!)

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Join us for our next meeting on April 26th.  Till then, best Toastmaster greetings from me,

Jeff

Spring forward – Theme of the Toastmasters meeting on 22nd March 2022

Pablo Neruda once said: “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.” No matter how bleak the situation is, there is always hope for the future. Despite all negative news we are approching the warmer season, time for joy, progress and growth.

14 participants took part in this spring meeting. Again our presiding officer Poorana welcomed our guests Ksenija, Moritz, Armin and Mike. All of them had visited the club before, so it was not necessary for Oliver, Toastmaster of the evening, to explain the structure of the meeting.
Jeff chose the word “plethora” as word of the evening which fitted the idea of spring. The garden shows a plethora of flowers in spring time. Or: There is a plethora of books about the royal family. The word was used a couple of times.

Martin cracked a joke about a magician working on a cruise ship which was well told, kept its tension and was rewared with laughter from the audience. As Table Topics master Martin made up some letters to an agony column and asked the members how they would answer.

1. A concerned mum complained about her son not dressing properly. Karl pointed out the feedom of will and differences of taste.
2. Former class mate sends weird messages. Moritz gave tips how to block these messages and to ignore the class mate.
3. Business man has trouble with superior because he comes late to work. Ksenija advised the man to get flexible working hours and have a talk with the HR department
4. Friends talk about their aches and pains all the time which makes you depressed. Ulrike advised to listen to them still and be sensitive.

We had three prepared speeches. Florian started with his second speech from the path presentation mastery. The purpose of his speech with the title: “Doing good better” was to convince the audience to choose effective charities having a greater impact on the world. His speech was evaluated by Sybille who suggested to explain the use of technical expressions more to help the listeners remember the content of the speech.
Poorana delivered the fifth speech of level three path presentation mastery. His project was to connect with the audience and he shared a story of his childhood with the title “the Genie has a message for you”. His speech was evaluated by Ksenija. Finally JP’s project from presentation mastery level 3 No 11 was to focus on the positive. “It is always good to have a plan”. His grandmother is a role model for him. She successfully led the family through difficult times – always having a plan. His speech was evaluated by Karl, who loved the authenticy of JP’s speech.

General Evaluator Jeff gave valuable feedback to all roles of the evening and asked for the reports of Ah-counter Uli and timer Kala. Again a great meeting with excellent speeches. Poorana gave the award for the best evaluator to Karl, Ksenija was awarded for the best Table Topic speech and the best speaker of the evening was JP.

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” – Leo Tolstoy

“Inside each of us is a natural-born storyteller, waiting to be released.”
— Robin Moore, author

Wow, 18 participants! The online format of the club is successful, again a good number of guests joined. We could welcome Adam from Ramstein again, Moritz who participated the second time,  Martin from BASF Toastmasters, Christiane from the Rhetorik Club Heidelberg and Sabine from TM Wiesbaden. Sabine took the opportunity to inform about the Division F Conference which takes place online on March 26 (https://wiesbadener-toastmasters.de/division-conference/ ).

Jeff as Toastmaster of the evening introduced the theme storytelling with an anecdote. Storytelling techniques were used in the joke by Martin and the thought of the day by Kevin. Both parts were vividly depicted with vocal variety.

Harriet led through the table topics session for the first time and also used the storytelling format. She told the beginning of a story which was then continued by Adam, Sabine, Uli, Ksenjia and finally Karl managed to round the story off and found a logic ending.
A firework of creativity was released by the speakers. This was very funny and everyone enjoyed it.

Jeff as Toastmaster very well introduced the two speakers of the evening. Florian delivered his Icebreaker speech with the title: “How (not) playing the cello brought me to Toastmasters”. This was a very powerful speech with lots of information about Florian we could connect to. Kala, the second speaker, talked about her experiences when getting a driving license: “Driving a car is not your cup of tea”.  Her very different experiences regarding her driving lessons in India and Germany were extremely entertaining.

Sybille led through the evaluation part of the evening. In his evaluation of Florian’s Icebreaker JP pointed out the excellent speaking skills Florian already showed – strong confidence, clear structure, lots of vocal variety. Martin liked the way Kala started her speech involving the audience with questions. He especially liked the different perspectives of becoming a car driver and her personal experiences, as well as her use of humor.

Sybille gave feedback to all roles that were performed during the evening highlighting Craig’s report as Grammarian who again kept a very close eye on the use of the English language and gave valuable tips e.g.for proper pronunciation. Also the Ah-Counter report by Kevin was very detailed and exact.

Our presiding officer Poorana finished the meeting with the award session. The best table topic speakers were Uli and Karl. The best speaker award went to Florian and JP did the best evaluation.

All in all again a great meeting. This time the agenda was filled well in time prior to the meeting and all participants registered in easy speak. This was a big improvement and made preparation for the Toastmaster of the evening easier.
Thanks to Sybille for this great recap.
Our next meeting is on 22th of February, hope to see you all there!
Best wishes,  Jeff

Here is a snapshot of the meeting (three participants had to leave early)