19th Jan 2011

I'll go into details of the meeting in a second, let me just give you the big news first:
- January 26th is a special meeting for club officer training
- next normal club meeting is February 2nd,
- next renewal in March will be 36 Euros for 6 months (rather than 72 for 12 months)
- no more members will be accepted until April
- no more new guests will be invited until April

I'll come back to this new members/guests topic towards the end.

We started on a different note: our new President MA was giving a nice introduction to another PACKED room of this week's SPANISH meeting. He explained once more that the TableTopics (TT) have moved to after the prepared speeches and speech evaluations, simply because we keep a moment of suspense, as well as managing better our time that we spend on TT. (Side note: maybe we should update the timer's template sheet, and put TT on the bottom there, too.)
Then MA called upon myself, Kai, Treasurer of the club, to present the report of 2010 and a special proposal. Last year we spend slightly more money than we took in, yet we still have healthy club finance because during some years with a weak dollar rate the club had quite some surplus. One change for 2011 is that we will have renewals in March and September, for 6 months each time. The special proposal was to help the new BCN Pride Toastmasters Club with 400 Euros sponsorship + 400 Euros loan for their initial spending, and this has been approved by vote of all active members attending.
During the presentation of Roles Marina explained how important the timing is, also in foresight to the Toastmaster competitions that are held twice a year: 30 seconds after the red light means you get disqualified. Laura's word of the day was Expert. TME Pilar also shared with us a very personal story on how her dad in Mexico beat her to become a Competent Communicator after the 10 first speeches from the CC manual - and she was there over Christmas to watch it - and evaluate his speech. Wow!

We then had our own first prepared speaker, an Icebreaker by DTM Dale, in Spanish. I really liked how he used a Toastmasters flier and had put notes inside, so that he could hold it up and read from there rather than from the notes on the lectern. His speech "En las Nubes" - in the cloud - was talking about his TM past, his relocation to Barcelona, and how is now looking for a job with the help of the cloud, LinkedIn for example.

Second Speaker Patricia was answering if becoming your own boss might be "¿Una buena idea?" - a good idea? She talked about teamwork, leadership skills and long term (financial) benefits of running your own business.

Third up was Rob with his speech 3 - "Tengo un problema", talking about obesity and giving great recommendation on how this problem needs to be tackled.

Our forth speaker had quite an impact on the whole room, when she asked what she and Kurt Cobain would have in common. This was a very informative talk with many different sources of information, all wrapped into a packing personal story that many of us will remember ... Wow!

Our evaluators were kind, as always. Maria commented on how brave Dale is to face a Spanish speech delivery, while obviously he is still struggling with grammar and vocabulary after living here just 3 months. Djanira recommended that Paty could as well work without notes, as they were not used, and that body language could help reinforce a great speech structure. Jose T was giving recommendations on transitions, and Kathryn confirmed that Sue had reached all our hearts and minds, while recommending to work on organisation to avoid any dead moment.

Antonio then presented his Table Topics, and his volunteers were Jose Luis (on the Catalan "Caganer", Lucie selling some magic drops, and Laura counting cows instead of counting sheep.

On the other reports and General Evaluator, let me point out how well Laura highlighted both great use of words, as well as suggestions for alternatives - this is very useful especially for foreigners like me, since we learn public speaking and improve our Spanish at the same time. GE Joan pointed out how important it is that everyone that has a rule on the agenda should arrive between 30 and 15 minutes before the start - otherwise those that are there already will be busy looking for alternatives ;) Another suggestion was that the Ah-Counter report should be compacted, so that it doesn't get boring.

The meeting was then handed back over to our President for more club business. M.A. announced the role of the Blogger, which will be done by 1 volunteer each week, and doing this role twice will count for the newsletter assignment of the CL manual.
We then came to the most difficult topic: closing down the entrance to the club. VPPR Marina confirmed that those guests who were confirmed for this week had been waiting since November. I was able to add to this (as treasurer) that we went from 16 renewed members to now 59 signed up members in just 10 months. M.A. hence put the committee's suggestion forward to a general club vote, that we won't accept new members nor invite new guests until April, and this was carried: all 29 attending members voted in favor, 0 against, 0 abstentions. We'll monitor the situation, the upcoming renewal (many thanks Maria for paying 36 already), and how membership develops as soon as Pride charters. At the same time we are looking for additional rooms and a larger room for our Wednesday meeting.

15th Dec 2010

Quick update from our last meeting before Xmas ... you see all roles on Easy-Speak anyway: 4 Table Topics about getting to know people, or getting rid of them again - Thank you, Maria del Mont! This was followed by 3 Icebreakers and 1 speech project #5. Marc told us why he joined Toastmaster, and in between we got to know a little about his work. Ana told us about the 3 most important decisions in her life: a European rail trip, going to London and going the Camino de Santiago. That last one must have been fun, because she met an interesting guy there, who would follow with his own icebreaker right after her: Riccardo from Italy shared some of his own adventures with us, closing the circle back to Ana, and sharing the link to his blog. Peter presented us The 7 P's = "Proper Planing Prevents Piss Poor Performance", a very nice, entertaining yet informative spin on the 5 P's of marketing. Our speech evaluators were full of praise, as always. Many thanks to Joan, David, Djanira and Dale. Among the learnings & recommandations for improvement, we heard how important it is to know where your hands are - ideally outside of your pocket, and how walking or pacing from left to right can give the impression of nerviousness, as well some hints on eye contact and facial expressions to compliment the body language that we project with your hands, arms and the rest of the body. General Evaluator Sue pointed out that we should try to have the chart with the TM Educational Tracks and the current DCP status visible. From the other reports I really liked Marisol's list of special words we use, which I as a foreigner still struggling with Spanish at times did indeed appreciate.

David closed of his 6 month of President, congratulating our 4 speakers who earned themselves a ribbon each (photo above). The Year 2010 has been the most successful in the club's history, so we can all be proud of our achievements. David will now be Immediate Past President, responsible for the nominations in preparation of the next elections. January we will welcome M.A. as our new President, who hopefully recovers from his cold ahead of Xmas ... you've been missed, Sir, thank you for making the extra effort to come to the committee meeting before the normal session!

Felices Fiestas, everyone. Yours, Kai.

2010 Reverse session and Xmas party

On Wednesday Dec 1st our Club had the first of the two last sessions of this fantastic year 2010 for Barcelona Toastmasters. Almost 40 people attended the session so we had to book a larger room at EAE. Being it a completely reverse, upside-down session, the choice of the Word of the Day was totally appropriate: "Surreal" (thanks Sue!!).

The reverse session dynamics, carefully prepared in advance by our VPEs Cormac and Pilar, implied that we started the session by evaluating the session (M.A. the General evaluator using his crystal ball), then evaluating the Speeches, then actually doing the Speeches, next we did the Table Topics (thanks Liz and Judit for the name raffle), announcing the Table Topic theme (David had to make magic), finally Peter our SAA welcoming everyone to the session (please turn your mobiles offfff).

Both the evaluators (Djanira, Kai, Sue) and speakers (Pilar, María, Marina) had to guess and/or adapt their speeches and evaluations to what was coming next, making it all the more fun, and, surreal!

After that we all enjoyed a well-deserved Xmas dinner party at the Llar del Pa Torrat, our classic hangout after sessions. Adrian made some pics of the evening!

Have a great "pont",
Marina
VP PR, Barcelona Toastmasters

P.S. The one who must REALLY have thought we're surreal is the unnanounced-waltz-in-late guest whom we never identified, never got an e-mail from him requesting to come, and who of course didn't get the info that we were conducting a Reverse session. As we say in Spanish, debe haber flipado!!! jejeje

2010 District 59 Humorous Speeches

Every year after summer, when the fall's humorous speech contests start at the clubs, many of us ask ourselves "what could we possibly talk about, that will make the audience laugh?"

During the Barcelona district 59 conference 2010, there were 10 Division winners presenting their prepared humorous speeches. This write up is from the scribbles I took (between laughing, wiping tears from my eyes, and trying to not fall off my chair).

1. Karen (UNIL-EPFL, Div E) - "Pain". Karen's speech topic was being misunderstood. It started with language/pronounciation, and how her friend Frank is spelling his own name with a strong russian accent "You mean F like in Frank?". Karen then explained how she tries to buy bread in French, cycling through various pronounciations of "pain". Then the funniest part was during a date when she was stating that she likes "foreign movies" a little bit too quickly ("for'gn movies"), and the guy took it as a genre that starts with a "P" instead. Imagine the conversation - are you watch those movies often? "whenever I can." Do you watch them alone? "Sometimes alone, or sometimes with my girl friends." Karen than pointed out that when you are misunderstood, you're in good company, with Galileo for example. There was a pun or two on George W. Bush, being misunder-stood at times, and misunder-estimated at others. Towards the closure, Karen referred back to Pain, P0rn and Pa' (french bread). What a start!

2. Philippe (The Europeans, Div B) presented his advice on how to create a really bad speech on purpose, and demonstrated his tips in his own one. The possibilities include a strong accent, no preparation, no structure, a strong disconnect from the audience, being boring, and leaving a very bad last impression, etc. As part of his speech he almost left the room, came back on stage with a coffee in his hands, and also had great examples on how you can lose yourself in sub-stories and further disconnected anectodes, losing the red thread completely. Very unique.

3. Peter M (Prestigious Speakers Barcelona, Div H) - "Murphy's Queue", accompanied by cheers from the conference organizing team. Peter looked into queuing (standing & waiting in line), and how an average person spends 6 months of their life in queues - "a prison sentence". He explained from his experiement at the supermarket's check-out queues, and all the things that happened there. Barcodes that don't work, fruit that still needs to be weight, wifes who plant their husbands in the queue with just a few items in his basket, only to join him later with a huge trolley full of products. Oh, and those old ladies who pay coin by coin in slow motion up to the exact amount. For those of us who have seen this speech before in our clubs / area / division - the end was more compact, without the call to Peter's wife, and the flip chart was not used. "Smile, tomorrow will be worse."

4. Daniel (Brussels, also Div B?). Like Karen, Daniel's speech was also on misunderstandings and languages, and how even the experts / bilingual / etc. can get it wrong at times. I must have followed his speech very carefully, since my only scribbles say "german girl" and "meat taken by surprise".

5. Ryan (Leiden, Div J) explained us that Table Topics (TT) should stop being Terror Topics / Torture Time, and we Toastmasters should start selling it into the medical industry, for example for muscle relaxation (bended knees?). We'd all be rich and buy ourselves a Toastmasters island, and fly with Toastmaster Airlines.

6. Peter S is from Esprit De Corps, Div F. His speech was about IKEA, and his relationship with the Swedish furniture chain. Apparently he has moved flats just to live closer to one, and his trip to Barcelona included visiting both IKEAs here ;) I could totally identify myself in his speech, as he explained how you go to buy furniture, and end up bringing coloured napkins and candles home.

7. Vera (Prague, Div D) presented her speech around flying, and especially the airport security. She presented ideas on how full body scanners and pat downs should be turned into a service, the Airport Spa, including massages and a dentist (using the x-ray pictures). "The more you fly, the brighter your smile." Being a frequent flyer myself, I really would see those ideas being put into practice!

8. Representing Stockholm, Div G, Adam's winning speech was about forbidden topics in our talks. He started teasing us to the use of the F-word, only to pronounce fffffffffffffffffellow toastmasters. he went on to describe the speech projects that should be included in advanced manuals around politics, religion ("Start a cult") and sex ("how to take your evaluator home"). Among other things, there was also a pun on a "No-Question", such as "Do you really want to go out with the boys tonight?" when asked by your wife with a strong facial expression and while shaking her head. All content was related to being sensible, sensitive but not censored. I felt the audience reaction was very strong during this speech, and knew this would put Adam comfortably in front.

9. Olivia's speech was also on Flying, but instead of the security checks, she focused on the cabin luggage rules (Ryanair) and flying with 2 Kids. On her lucky days, she boards the plane and finds no combination of 3 free seats together. So she gets to have some time "off", while her kids can bombard some other passenger with their "why" questions ;) Hilarious!

10. Mel - "Evaluating Mel". The speech starts at a date, where Mel's Kissing skills have received a harsh evaluation. The second example is around Mel's salsa dancing. The overall topic is how we take evaluations when outside our clubs, and that sometimes we should just listen, even if the feedback is "a sandwidth technique without the bread." Kissing, dancing, speaking: you try, you get feedback, then you try again. There was a nice Winston Churchill quote: "There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you."

I'd like to congratulate all contestants, and say THANK YOU for entertaining us so well.

Results were revealed after the deserts during the gala dinner. 1st Adam, 2nd Karen, 3rd Peter M.

There were 2 disqualifications for going more than 30 seconds over time.

Almost Distinguished

Congratulations to Cormac for completing his CL manual. With this already reported to HQ, our club looks quite good in the Distinguished Club Program (DCP), with 4 out of 10 goals already accomplished.

To date, there are 15 others clubs in our district (#59 Continental Europe) that also are at 4 goals, but not a single club has reached "Distinguished Status" (5 goals) yet.

Could we possibly be the first???

We'd need 1 more CC, or 1 more CL / AL, or 1 AC award.

Table Topics and Humorous Speech Contest

El pasado 28 de Septiembre, en Barcelona Toastmasters celebramos la primera fase del concurso anual de discurso humorístico y Table Topics. Fue una jornada de lo más agradable, con excelentes oradores y una gran participación de todos los miembros.

En la categoría de Table Topics, los ganadores fueron, por este orden: María Lozano, Judit Permanyer y Robert Ferrer.

En la categoría de discurso humorístico, los ganadores fueron: M.A. Garcías ("Descubre al friki"), Cormac Walsh ("The Venezuelan Mouse") y David González ("El nene, el papá y los mocos"). Y para todos aquellos que no tuvieron la suerte de asistir, aquí tenéis los discursos de David y M.A. Que los disfrutéis, y gracias a todos.

Last September 28th, Barcelona Toastmasters celebrated the first round of the yearly Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest. It was a really nice evening, with excellent speakers and great involvement from all members.

On Table Topics, winners were: María Lozano, Judit Permanyer and Robert Ferrer.

On Humrous Speech, winners were: M.A. Garcías ("Descubre al friki"), Cormac Walsh ("The Venezuelan Mouse") and David González ("El nene, el papá y los mocos"). To all of you who couldn't come, now's your chance to enjoy the speeches by David and M.A. Thanks everybody!

La siguiente cita: el Area Contest en ambas categorías, el 16 de octubre en Mallorca.

Next stop: the Area Contest on both categories, Octobre 16th in Mallorca.

Nuevo VP Education para el club

Como ya sabéis, nuestro club Toastmaster está coordinado por un grupo de miembros que cada seis meses se ofrecen voluntarios para dirigir, organizar, coordinar y llevar a buen ritmo las actividades administrativas y de gestión que nuestras actividades exigen. Lamentablemente, una de nuestras compañeras, la actual responsable de educación (VP Education) tuvo que renunciar a su puesto en el comité de coordinación, por lo que la semana pasada, y siguiendo las reglas del club, hicimos una nueva votación para cubrir esta vacante tan importante para nosotros.

Así, tengo el placer de anunciar que Cormac Walsch, otro de nuestros miembros más activos y experimentados, toma el relevo de Sue Chien Lee y es a partir de ahora nuestro nuevo VP Education, encargándose entre otras cosas, y con la ayuda de nuestra secretaria Pilar de Obeso, de preparar las magnificas sesiones que hacemos cada miércoles y de que tengamos siempre una agenda en orden y completa para disfrutar en cada sesión.

Mi enhorabuena a Cormac por su investidura oficial como VP Education y mis mas sinceras gracias tanto a él, como a Pilar como al resto del equipo que colabora para que el club esté siempre funcionando a pleno rendimiento, y además, pasándonoslo muy bien en ello.

David González
Presidente

And we are back

Whenever I'm away for a Toastmaster meeting, I wonder how it was. Last week I was able to attend, and here is a little report for those who couldn't be there. I start with the important club business announcements from our President David, followed by a run down of the normal session.

David announced that Sue has officially resigned from VP Education (VPE). This means in the meeting of September 15th there will be mini elections for this one position. We already have a nominee: Cormac (thank you!). If there are any other people who would like to become the VPE, please prepare a little 2 min presentation. If there is only 1 candidate, than the election will be brief by show of hands (for / against / abstinent). If there are more candidates, the secret ballot elections will be used.

The other club business topic is about the upcoming round of fall contests. Every member is allowed to compete, even those who just signed up, and it is possible to compete in both contest types:

- Humorous Speech (prepared) - 5 to 7 minutes

- Table Topics - 1 to 2 minutes

The dates for the various rounds are these:

Round 1 Club Level - Wednesday, 29th September (??? *)

- 2 winners each (Humorous / TT) move up to ...

Cormac and myself organize this round. Get in touch if you want to compete.

Round 2 Area H1 Level - Saturday, 16th October, Mallorca

please see hotel info here:

http://district59.eu/viewagenda.php?t=9774

- 2 winners each move up to ...

Round 3 Division H Level (Iberia) - Saturday 6th November, Lisbon

http://district59.eu/viewagenda.php?t=10201

- 1 winner each moves up to ...

Round 4 District 59 Level (Continental Europe) - Saturday 20th Nov, Barcelona

(Register & pay before September 30th to save 10 Euros!)

http://toastmasters-euroconf-2010-barcelona.org/

* = After the meeting we found out that September 29th is the general strike day in Spain. We don't know if the EAE building will be closed, and we doubt that public transport will be working reliably. Hence we are reviewing the timing, and worse case we might have to push that out one week. :-o

Now about the meeting itself. I jumped in as Sergeant at Arms, David presented Cormac as the Toastmaster of the Evening (TME). Timer Mara, Ah-Counter Djanira and Grammarian Marisol explained their roles. Then our Table Topics Master Inma presented us with the following situation: we are on a plane trip and the airline was running out of normal cabin seats due to overbooking - and kindly gave us an upgrade to a first class seat instead. So what would we say to this celebrity that sits next to us? Jordi was sitting next to Zapatero, Marisol found Belen Esteban on her side, Oscar was meeting Pep Guardiola and Adrian would chat to Amy Whitehouse. I truly enjoyed this TT session.

In the prepared speeches, Robert gave his icebreaker on how an engineer ended up in marketing. Joan gave CC speech 7 on his research around Virtual Water, and Maria presented her speech 13 (Storytelling) on a very special train trip with various persons. The speech evaluators had plenty of things to praise and highlight, too many for me to scribble them all down. I do have captured some suggestion though: Both Pilar and M.A. would recommend to focus on 1 general topic rather than indirectly adding more, and David recommended less slides to spend more time on them and putting the free hand alongside your body rather than in the pocket of the trousers. All 3 speeches were praised for being well prepared, and definitely setting a high standard for our club. General Evaluator Jose reminded us that jokes were forgotten at the beginning, and that we should have regular meeting updates (such as this one) exactly like Xavi Verde did them some time ago. Every meeting there should be one member writing them.

After all the club business - see above - President David asked the guests for feedback, and all of them were full of praise. Several of them were signing the membership application forms, so we'll hopefully hear icebreakers from Maria, Marc and Alex soon. Right after that the session was closed, and I had to run back home. Did you stay for drinks and toasts? Let me hear about it in the comments, please.