Our new home

2/12/2015

After a couple of months moving from one place to another, we finally have our new home. And, as our president Jelena said, “I am very excited because our new home is in Barcelona´s University!” A great room and new home for the Barcelona Toastmaster Club.

Georgiana was the Toastmaster for the session and the theme selected by her was “Out of the box”. What does this expression makes you think of? What means for you thinking outside of the box? And to what thinking outside of the box leads, as a result?

Georgiana went on with the agenda for the session and the presentation of the Technical team – the word of the day was HOME – it had to be this word.

Olga C. presented her Ice Breaker, her first speech – “Identity is relative”.  Olga told as that she is from Moldova and talked about the national identity issue in her country and the confusion due to the relation with Russia and Romania. A great history lesson that she shared with us, combined with personal anecdotes. Great first speech from Olga and very enlightening. Well done Olga!

 Merce presented her third speech – “Everybody hated your presentation. Now what?” Merce talked about an experience she had in her new job 3 years ago, when she was asked to do a presentation, in front of the whole company, in English and about herself. She did not feel confident and told us that is was a complete failure. She learnt from the experience and took note of 3 things that helped her to confront similar situation in the future: control your feelings, be open to receive constructive feedback and not being afraid to make changes. We can always learn and improve.

Merce is now an official member of the Club and she can start giving feedback to the speakers. Congratulations Merce!

And the third speech of the day was performed by Rayane. It was her first speech for the “Speaking to inform” of the Advance Speech module - “Read the stars”. Rayane introduced a subject for which people may have completely different opinions, the horoscope. She explained where it comes from, within the astrology and astronomy world, and what are the different parts that need to be taken into account: the sun, the moon, the ascendant and the descendent. She explained that it is a tool that can help you to know yourself better and use it for self-improvement. But, at the end of the day, it is your choice to use it or not. Congratulations on your first advance speech Rayane!

After the speeches, we went through the feedback provided by the evaluators:

-          Laia evaluated Olga on her Ice Breaker, mentioning that she had natural body language and eye contact, she had used a very descriptive vocabulary and had shared personal anecdotes.  

-          Paul evaluated Merce, confirmed that the objectives had been met, using a very descriptive personal story, using the rule of 3 and calling to action in the conclusion of the speech.

-          M.A. evaluated Rayane, starting by saying that she had introduced the topic very well by challenging the expectations, providing an effective structure and proposing to use the horoscope as a tool.

In all cases, the evaluators identified the positive points and also raised those things that can be improved and that always help us to continue growing. In all cases, they provided specific examples of how to improve.

We then started with the Table Topics, guided by Felipe, who reviewed the process to get ready for an improvised speech.

The 3 speakers in the Table topics were real volunteers, this time. Brave people our colleagues. The first one was Catalina, who had to talk about “Mediocre talent shows make half revenues”. Our second table topic was done by one of our guests, Sean, who had to come up with an answer to “Is knowledge more important that wisdom?”  And the last improvised speech was also perform by a guest, Dani, who had to provide 3 reasons to “Why people should listen to his speeches?”

After the table topics, Georgiana explained to us why she had selected the theme of the day. She explained that people are so focused on what they have in their heads that they do not listen. She called to action by telling us to do things differently – we make the line of the box and we can break that line.

The General Evaluator was Gerard, who made a very good summary of the session and provided feedback to the people that were doing different roles during the session. This feedback helps us to improve.

Jelena closed the session with a reminder for the Christmas party that will take place on December 11^th.

By Beatriz