10th October…What is something that you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?

10th October…What is something that you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?

Wednesday, 10^th October, 7,45 p.m. another outstanding Barcelona TM Club session in this case led by the Toastmaster Soledad Catellano. As a consequence that our President Isabel Montero was absent Sebastian Ortega introduced us to the action.  

The question of the night was: ¿What is something that you think everyone should do at least once in their lives? Soledad took her role as Toastmaster announcing all the roles and speakers of the night together with their answers one after the other to the proposed question.

First, the technical Team composed by Cristina Gil as Ah-Counter,  Ángela Delgado as Grammarian and finally Andreina Peraza as Timekeeper

1st Speaker. The first speech was from Alvaro Fernandez, his Ice Breaker! ( CCM-1 Ice breaker ) -“What makes you different”-. Closely attended by his mentor Mª Luisa Gomes, he seemed pretty calm in his opening as public speaker. In his 6 minutes of glory he explained a brief recap of his live, and clarified what makes him different during his life and why. He claimed that the main reason for coming to Toastmasters Club is becoming able to give not only for giving good speeches but also very amazing, that will make him different from the others. Sure, you’ll get it Alvaro.  He ended up sending a powerful question to the audience: “¿what makes you different?”

2nd Speaker. The 2^nd speech was from Anne-Sophie Bata ( CCM-2 Organize your speech ), “The ugly side of the beautiful game”. Anne came back to the stage with a well-structured new speech. The beautiful game was in this case the Football. She highlighted two main issues in this sport: money and corruption. The immense popularity of the football is now the root why it moves huge quantities of money. Another plague is corruption. FIFA has been involved in scandals in Russia World Cup as well as in the next one in Qatar. Not only money and corruption are problems in football but also has it to cope with others problems such as illegal betting, doping, violence and racism.

3rd Speaker. Camilla Brenchley came back after a one year break to the Barcelona TMT Club giving a fantastic speech ( CCM-6 Vocal Variety ) “What a world”.

She tried to convinced us that this world is a much more better place we think. Her speech tried to be all the time a hopeful message about the world in which we live. She structured her speech with a well-structured introduction, followed with friendly and colourful slides -plenty of sense of course-. She gave figures which demonstrated the situation worldwide is better than the past pointing out that only the 11.6% of world population lives in poverty now vs 50% in 1976. She ended up her speech wishing we could change our negative mental picture, being able to be positive and spreading good news. Welcome back Camila!

Evaluation Time

Yanina carried out first speech’s Alvaro evaluation. Yanina highlighted as positive things: perfect tone of voice and clarity, Alvaro showed his attention to everybody and everywhere, he didn’t use notes, sense of humour was included in her speech, but the best for her was the perfect conjunction between his introduction and conclusion. What could Alvaro improve next times: making longer pauses after questions to the audience and working his position during his speech on the stage.

As regards Anne’s speech it was evaluated by Sebastian. First of all, he reminded the main objectives of 2^nd speech: a well-structured speech with strong opening and conclusion and he gave his advice to Anne. Apart from that, he compared her 1^st performance vs the 2^nd one, suggesting that she was now more confident. He remarked as well she already moves a lot on the stage and he recommend looking at people stronger in the point she wants to achieve more impact. Look at wrong places is a signal of forget thinks so she could take more time to prepare the speech. Finally a tip useful for everyone: if you forgot something say a neutral sentence or question instead of be silent and thoughtful.

The last evaluation was done by Zuzana. She praised widely Camilla’s speech. Zuzana mentioned one after another all strengths of the previous talk. The most acclaimed was the great organization of the speech, the very good use of pauses as well as the use of the pitch and rhythm. But also she alluded the colourful slides, the simple and clear use of the language with clear distinctions such as “them  and us” or “rich and poor”. She valued highly of course the hopeful message Camilla gave at the end.  

Few things for improving, perhaps she missed some key words to increase expressiveness of the speech.

Table topics

Sebastian Tunell presented Table Topics of the evening. Only 2 improvised speeches but both hilariously funny.  The first was performed by Marc Majoral who tried to convinced Adaliz for scuba diving with no success, ( she hates scuba dive and the only thing she wanted was to be relaxed in Tunisia ).

The other couple was characterized by Albert and Bea. Albert, with compelling voice suggested Bea that it was high time to have a baby helped with expressions like “se te pasa el arroz”. The only thing he got from Bea gave was a categorical and substantial negative reply.

 Another beautiful session ended with the awesome general evaluation of the meeting done by Jelena Vetockina. At the end Alvaro received his Ice Breaker ribbon and Camilla her intermediate point CCM ribbon.


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