Today I want to give short review of our Toastmaster evening on Tuesday, 2nd August 2016. It is summer in Munich and some of our members are on vacation. But still we managed to have a fantastic – even inspiring – evening and had all Toastmaster roles filled:
Welcome: Confronting the fear of public speaking
The President Damian opened the meeting on time at 7 pm with a little personal story about confronting personal fears. And yes, he made the connection to the Toastmasters because many of us have joined the club to confront the fear of public speaking.
Moderation: Many moderators think that all the world revolves around them
Martin led us through the day as Toastmaster of the evening. In the beginning he made a joke about his belief that moderators think that all the world revolves around them. Well, I think we Toastmsters know it better, right?
Table Topics: A pesonal challenge for most of us
Abel challenged us as Table Topic master of the evening. As usual, the club members had to deliver some small impromptu speeches of 1 – 2 minutes. The divers subjects were about the Oktoberfest, mobile phone contracts, airport situations, Obama and people not telling you the whole truth. We heard five speakers and I think they made a really good job.
After the table topics we heard three very interesting speeches which were – of course – prepared. Each speech was part of the first Toastmaster manual “Competent Communication”.
Speeches about the future of education, introverts and the secret of happiness.
The first speech was from Sami about the future of education. He believes that MOOCs (massive open online couse) will be a revolution in the education sector and will make education available to everyone. For free. He invited us to try them out. Well, as a person working in the education sector I clearly see this as another To-Do for me.
The second speech was from Tetiana about introverts. She made this speech very personal by opening the speech with the pure sentence “I am an introvert.” Well done! She gave some personal tips to introverts like scheduling time for yourself in the calendar. Even though I don’t think I am a real introvert I have the feeling that I should do this as well from time to time…
The third speech was from Dominik about the secret of happiness. Who would not like to know the secret of happiness? Dominik told us that the secret of happiness lies in low expectations, and yes, I can only agree to this one out of my personal experience. He closed his speech with the call to keep our expectations low on purpose in order to become happier. Easy enough, isn’t it?
After those wonderful speeches we had a short break followed by the evaluation part.
Evaluations: Listening means learning something new (about yourself)
Marcel was the general evaluator who is the moderator for the evaluation section. He said that speaking is about something you already know while listening is about learning something new. I liked that a lot. And I would like to add: When listening to an evaluation of your speech you learn something new and very valuable about yourself.
Each of the three speakers had a personal evaluator of their speech. And these evaluators evaluated the speeches on stage. An evaluation normally takes between 2 – 3 minutes.
We heard three good and very subjective evaluations from Dimitrios, Adeel and Bert. I am always impressed when I hear other people’s evaluations. So many things I didn’t notice, I didn’t think of because we all see the world through our personal filters.
After these subjective evaluations of the speeches we heard more objective evaluations. Damian as the Grammarian made recommendations about a better use of English in our speeches and moderations, e. g. making shorter and more active sentences. I will try to remember this one.
Then Carsten came on the stage as Ah Counter and told us about all our filler words like “ah” and “ehm”… It is not always easy to avoid them but we are all working on improving. Using almost no filler words makes a more competent impression.
Next Ralf as the Timekeeper made a good job by keeping an eye on the time and letting us know how much some of us had stretched our allocated minutes. I think our time management wasn’t too bad that evening.
Finally Marcel as General evaluator evaluated the whole evening, closed the evaluation section and handed back to Martin, the Toastmaster of the evening
At the end of the evening Marcel (this time as VP Education) filled the roles for the next meeting and Martin and Damian closed the meeting at around 9 pm. This was also the time where Damian as President asked the guests how they found the Toastmasters and how they liked the evening. Typically we greet all guests in the beginning of the meeting and ask them at the end for feedback.
Some of us then went to an Italian restaurant near by. This is the time for chatting and more networking. All members and guests are always invited to come along.
I enjoyed the eveneing very much. Great impromptu and prepared speeches, a very professional moderation, and good conversations at the Italian restaurant. Thanks to all of you who made this evening a “special” but also somehow typical Munich Toastmasters evening.
Gudrun
VP Public Relations