Category: News

Apart from improving your English speaking skills is there another language you want to learn and why? Opening the meeting JP addressed this questions to the audience. Our answers varied broadly. From Japanese over Spanish to Xhosa Toastmasters are curious about languages. They give the opportunity to learn more about a foreign culture or to have great holidays abroad. Sometimes even a dulcet speech melody is enjoyable. Jazzmin who was also the Toastmaster of the evening presented the word of the day. “To pull someone’s weight” means to do one’s fair share of work. “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. (George Bernard Shaw)” was chosen by Jeff for the thought of the day. A slogan matching perfectly the Toastmasters approach. What are the different techniques of a general practitioner, a pathologist and a surgeon in duck hunting? MartinE’s joke answered this secret.

Günter was able to join us again and chaired the table topics. He wanted the participants to find solutions for the burning questions of limited public budgets. So Jazzmin gave a clear statement that reducing subsidies for the cultural live would be counterproductive. In fact cities with many cinemas, theatres and museums would usually show a greater economic wealth.  The sense of teaching mathematics at school was discussed by Thomas. He was sure that improving the teaching methods would have a better effect than reduced spending on a subject that nowadays many pupils dislike. Lots of money is spent for astronomic research and space missions. But MartinE denied giving up these activities for financial reasons because our modern life would come to a standstill without innovations like Teflon® or GPS navigation. JP focused on the sense of subsidies for sports events. Instead of sponsoring these events with tax revenues he suggested the state should support a Toastmasters convention for that would give a real benefit to many people.

In an educational session Jeff explained the Toastmasters distinguished club program. He outlined the main aspects of the program and analyzed why each part of it — educational skills, membership growth and club management — helps the club to become more successful. And Mannheim Int. is doing pretty well this year. Again our club will reach the status of a “Select Distinguished Club”.

The Story of Mr Happy was told by MartinS. Mr Happy was able to convince sad and unhappy people to come to “Happyland” which made them flourish. With an excellent use of body language he made Mr Happy become alive and enriched the story with awesome dialogs.

Because everyone pulled his / her weight Mannheim’s International Toastmasters and their guests profited from this evening.

It was a special evening wasn’t it? Our president opened it giving an overview of the clubs development. Growing step by step Mannheim International helped its members to grow themselves. JP pointed out that besides people improving their skills lots of us became friends and are really enjoying the time together. The following round table showed a broad variety of our Toastmasters experiences – the cheerful atmosphere, delivering the icebreaker speech, being part of an international community.

Jeff as led through the evening with professional introductions and smooth interactions. Thomas presented the word of the day – in a humorous way: „esurient“ means being hungry or greedy. Who is able to go wherever he wants with his vehicle – a tram driver or a cyclist? Mauro told the joke of the day and finally made everyone laugh. The thought of the day was given by Stephan, the consideration why computers will take over the world some day.

Then it was table topic time. Alexander invited four people to explain barely known words. But Gaetano, Greg, Rolf and Arne managed to illustrate the meaning of „fastidious“, „supplicate“, exegisis“ and „epigone“ – well done!

The jubilee went on with four (!) speeches. Li talked about stereotypes people from China are often confronted with. Now we know that table tennis isn’t that popular and dog meat not one of their favorite dishes. With a good punching line he made everyone giggle about competing with a Korean in a beer drinking contest. Then it was Martin’s turn. Strongly he showed how the use of affirmations can be a good help in your everyday life. Three points are important, to accept yourself, to repeat a personal mantra and to have an emergency mantra. Awais was our special guest from Karlsruhe Toastmasters Club. He presented the touching story of David. This child suffered from spasticity. But his father faced the long and difficult struggle to provide a better life for his son. Our last speaker Arne explained the core principles of the Harvard Concept. We gained an interesting insight into his work encouraging people to talk to each other and making things happen. All the speakers received some useful feedback. Perrine, Jeff, Greg and Martin presented the evaluation speeches.

Even if it took more time than expected thanks to almost 30 participants, a colorful decoration and lots of enthusiasm it was an evening worth to mark this special event.

We once again had a very funny and entertaining meeting on the 13^th of December. With a bit of gingerbread brought by Jeff we set a kind of Christmas atmosphere. During the round-table we all talked about the highlights of this year which for many people included things as travel, job changes and of course winning awards at Toastmasters meetings!

Li did a great job as the Toastmaster of the Evening for the first time and began by explaining the meeting to our guests. Mauro delivered a joke about a bear and a very creative rabbit who were each granted three wishes by a fairy. The word of the evening was brought to us by Jeff who taught us that “peruse” is a great way to state that you are “looking something over”. Martin E. gave us the three very appropriate phrases that sum up Christmas by an unknown author: “peace on earth, goodwill to men, batteries not included”.

The table-topics theme that was set by Hyejin was motivated by the experience that her parents who do not speak English could now use a translation device, so knowing foreign languages becomes less important. This inspired her to let us go to the future and let us go back and say what was important now in 2011 but not important any more in 20 years.

Stefan stated that the iPhone was really popular once, but of course concluded that it was not important any more as Android device really came out and surpassed the iPhones. Katharina told us that the train-car traffic system is not used any more as poor people are using flying cars and rich people are making use of beam machines.

Zoe informed us that in 2031 a healthy lifestyle is strongly promoted and McDonalds and Burger King are just relics of ancient times. Erich surprised us when he told us that oxygen could not be replaced so easily and people still need it to breathe. A great relief was given to us by Arne when he told us that the Toastmasters timekeeping lamp is not actually in use anymore in 2031, so this nightmare was removed.

After the break, René gave us a great educational about using a camcorder as a feedback device. We are now using this great tool to record our own speeches, so we can look at the video on our own and see with our own eyes how great we are!

Then Calvin gave his ice-breaker speech in our club. Following the title of his speech “Wherever I lay my head is my home” he told us about his family, his travel and moving throughout the US a lot and that he considers himself a journeyman. He has worked in various jobs and finally began the actual journey to becoming an educator and gave us the inspiring thought that fear is just “false illusions appearing real”. What a great ice-breaker!

The second speech of the evening was given by Martin S. whose task it was to “organize his speech”. He clearly laid out his three points when introducing us to “the science of happiness”: Giving yourself permission to be happy now from the inside even as you are feeling sad things, the subjective happiness scale from 1 to 10 that you can easily change for yourself just by changing your posture and finally the now exercise in which he demonstrated to us how it is done with a breathing exercise and made us very happy.

In the evaluation section that was led by me, Jeff and Martin E. gave two very competent and helpful evaluations of the two speeches. Thomas provided a detailed account of our grammar, Helen counted our usage of filler words and Volker took care of the time and the Toastmasters timekeeping device.

This was actually our last Toastmasters meeting of 2011. The next meeting will take place on the 10^th of January. I wish you a happy Christmas or Holidays and a great start into the new year!!!

In our special theme meeting for Thanksgiving our Toastmaster Jeff had done great preparations: We had candles, yummy original pumpkin pie brought by Calvin and a great spirit. With an attendance of 15 people in total we happily welcomed our two guests Helen and Wolfram and also Stefan from the German club who visited us for the first time!

During our round-table talk we all discussed what we are thankful for. We have found out that a lot of people are thankful for Toastmasters, being able to buy what they want, education, their family and having a happy life!

Jeff then gave us some great information on how Thanksgiving is conducted in the US. He explained the history of the holiday starting in 1621 and told us that feeling thankful also helps people to feel better.

Calvin gave us the very fitting word of the day “enspirit” which is like enspire and is also related to building such a great team as in Toastmasters! It was well used in that evening. Mauro continued with the joke of the evening in which an employer had a great surprise for any employee that would roll a 6 with a dice.

In his thought of the day, Martin disclosed that his knowledge on Thanksgiving primarily from TV shows and movies. He found that Thanksgiving is a day of meeting people and consequently quoted Johnny Carson: “Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.”

Our Tabletopics-Master Günter had prepared a theme that also reflected on being thankful. His first question went to Li who had to speak about what his favorite holiday is and why. Li said he generally liked all holidays because he had the day off and did not need to go to school. However, as a child, spring festival was his favorite holiday because children receive cash from their grandparents, aunts, uncles and other relatives.

Calvin was asked to talk about the obstacles he had to overcome. He began by talking about getting up and talking in front of people and getting noticed by them. Also he mentioned the challenge of being a role model for younger people and concluded that this helped him become a better person.

René had the challenge of giving a spontaneous speech about Cicero’s believe that thankfulness is the parent of all virtues. He carefully weighed the facts that on the one hand a lot of people interpret gratitude as a wish to receive more, but also stated that it might be right because nobody brags about not being thankful, so it might be true.

Yafang spoke about who she would invite to a Thanksgiving party and what would happen there. Thinking quickly on her feet, she invited all of us first! Then she would also invite some famous football players and have a party with a sports game, Chinese food and at the end of the party she wants the new NBA season would begin.

After the break we continued the meeting with three prepared speeches. Martin began with speech number 2 from the Competent Communication Manual “Organise your Speech”. He talked about situations in which you need quick answers and the basics of ready wit. This was structured into the three elements strong analysis, humor and reaction to an attack. In his very funny speech in which he served as a live example, he gave us the hints to ask for solutions, assume your opponent is worse than you and don’t explain yourself and did a great job on that!

Perrine let her “body speak” in the second speech. She talked about her trip to an agricultural show where she had the roles of a farmer, the daughter of a farmer and herself on a special mission. She vividly demonstrated to us all the great things such as a potato harvester, new tractors with cool seats. She told us she was working as an international spy stealing secrets on new tractor technology, but she soon found out she was not the only spy in there.

The third speech on that evening was given by me. I did the project “research your topic” and talked about how I looked on Google and was shocked that you could only find Toastmasters with search terms as “public speaking”, but not leadership, communications or presentation skills. Following up with the creation of our new website, I demonstrated what I found on Search Engine Optimization so that people will be able to find us better.

René served as the General Evaluator and introduced the three evaluators Günter, Katharina and Jeff who all gave some great and useful feedback. Yafang kept track of the time during the meeting and ensured we would stay in it. Li gave his detailed report on the Ahs and other filler words that were used by the participants. Katharina also gave the grammarian’s report and pointed out good examples of the English language and gave some advice for improvement.

Awards went to Li, Perrine and Jeff. It was another fun evening with a great atmosphere. I would like to thank everyone and especially our Toastmaster Jeff for making this possible. Hope to see you at the next meeting, please sign up on Easy-Speak!