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.