Last day before holidays

Wednesday, July 27

The session last Wednesday started with 2 news from our President Sandra Almeida – a good one and a bad one. We agreed that we wanted to listen to the bad one first, which was that this was our last session before the holiday season. Oooohhhh… 
But the good news compensated the bad one because…. TV3 (the Barcelona local tv) was recording our session in order to raise awareness about public speaking. How exciting!!! 
We have a couple of photos with our President (Sandra):

and the Toastmaster of the day (Rayane):

Going ahead with our session, Sandra also showed us a video about the “limits” and that they only exist in our head. She encouraged us to be brave and forget about limits. We can do whatever we want!

Sandra then welcomed the guests and asked them to introduce themselves. We had guests from many different places: Poland, America, Pamplona,…

Rayane was the Toastmaster for the session and the theme selected by her was “Improvised speeches”, which meant that we were going to have to improvise during the whole session, not just during the table topics… No one was safe from participating this time… And that was the objective – to take us out of our comfort zone.

And Maria Luisa was the first “victim”. She was assigned to explain the agenda for the day to the group and she was successful. The second “victim” was Enrique, who had to tell us the joke of the day… Hopefully our American guest had sense of humor…

The Technical team was presented:

• Hugo was the timekeeper and he had to introduce the word “salsa” in the explanation of his role.

• Cristina was the ah-counter and she was giving a pair of scissors, which she had to use during the explanation of the role.

• It was the first time Raffaella was doing the role of Grammarian and she was also instructed to use a comparison with an Italian word (her native language) during the explanation of her role. Raffaella also gave the word of the day – IMAGINATION- which was used by many members during the session.

• And finally, myself, had to present the role of the blogger using the body language. I did my best…

Morgane Bideau presented her Ice Breaker, her first speech – “Don´t wait for your dream job, create it”. Morgane shared with us her experience at work. She started very excited with the idea of coming to live in Barcelona, in a job that she liked. But things changed a bit for various reasons. Morgane is a very emotional person and while talking to a friend of her about the situation, her friend said: “and what are you going to do, then?” This is not exactly what Morgane was expecting from him. She wanted her friend just to listen to her and support her. But that question remained with her and made her change her attitude and stop being a “drama queen”.

At that point she started thinking about the things she likes doing: connect with people, find out about their life, create ideas… and she missed being a journalist! So she started to apply these things to her work and she has now more positives than negatives. This is a great example to show that you can create the job of your dream. Morgane, thanks for sharing this great lesson with us and doing a great ice breaker.  Congratulations!

Marc Maurey presented his second speech of the Competent Communication Manual – “The biggest lie ever told”.

“Which is that drug/poison that we all consume every day but that we don´t even realize that we do it?” This is how Marc started his speech and attract all our attention. And what was this poison? MILK!

Marc did a very good informative speech about why he thinks that milk is not exactly the great product that we are being sold and that it is a product obtained by a cruel treatment to the cows. He also explained how milk makes a protein that is too acid for the human´s stomach and this has a negative impact in the calcium and phosphate in our bones, reducing them instead of increasing them, as we are being told.

Marc spoke about other choices available for milk and cheese, made with other products instead of milk. And finished his speech with a question: “Is all the cruelty necessary just to have some cheese?” We have to admit that the speech was thought provoking….

After the speeches, we went through the feedback provided by the evaluators. Prior to that, Judit explained that the evaluations are important because they help to improve our listening and critical thinking.

• Mariyana evaluated Morgane on her Ice Breaker, confirming that she had achieved all the objectives of the speech. She said that Morgane connected with the audience by talking about her challenges, that she had very good body language and the structure of the speech made it easy to follow.

• Jelena evaluated Mark, confirming as well that the objectives had been met, showing self-confidence, emotional connection and vocal projection.

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.

We then started with the Table Topics, guided by Carlos Calvo, who clearly explained how to prepare an improvised speech and gave us a new tip - the PREP technique:

Point

Reason

Example

Point

The speakers in the Table topics were Sean, Emilie and Miguel. Sean talked about a special member from our club that “has done the nicest thing for him” since he arrived to Barcelona by inviting him to a beer and becoming great friends. Emilie explained to us that “the biggest lie that she once believed was true” was Santa Claus! I hope children don´t read this blog… And Miguel explained to us that “if he had unlimited time and money, he would go on holidays to” a Caribbean beach. He then thought about it again and… he confirmed that there is no need to go very far away and have lots of money to go to the best place on earth – his loving island Mallorca!

The General Evaluator was Marc Majoral, who was instructed by the Toastmaster to use the phrase “This meeting was beautiful!” during the evaluation. Marc liked the session so much that he used this phrase 2 times! Marc did a very good summary of the session.

And Sandra closed the session giving the recognition award to Morgane for her first speech. And also to Emilie and Miguel for organizing the Summer party:

And remember that we need to find a new venue for September – see you all in September!


Bea