A night full of diversity

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15 May 2013

Written by Gabriel Bau

For those of you that couldn’t attend to our last meeting, I must say that you missed a very complete night. It was exotic but traditional, frantic and dynamic, also inspirational and informative.

I learnt from Marc Noguera how to prepare a sauce and a lentils dish with an exotic touch. But don’t worry, he told us that he will send the recipes. Also, Javier Masias made us laugh speaking about consultants. Do you know that a consultant is someone who offers me something you don’t need tells you something you already knew and finally picks up the shepherd’s dog (the most important thing of him)?

Apart from that, Tamara Valenzuela was the Table Topic of the night and convinced us not to be afraid of improvisation as this is something we do 90% of the time. She brought us some inspiring sentences like “an optimist is someone that looks for projects, a pessimist is someone who makes up excuses” or “the optimist looks into your eyes, the pessimist looks to your feet”.

The evaluators gave me some interesting ideas: try to keep calm during the session even though you have been in a hurry during all day, we want a dynamic session and not a frantic one. Also, that we should avoid the use of words like “In summary” in the middle of your speech as this can create confusion to the audience.

Robert Ferrer reminds us that we will have elections on the 23th of May. Everyone is encouraged to have a role, especially the role of VPE as the club exists thanks to the free participation of all.

Lucie Arnaudies reminds us that Toastmasters is celebrating its 10th anniversary on the 24th of May. It costs 25 € for the dinner, dancing, drinking and many surprises. Do not wait until the end or it could be too late.

Cormac Walsh reminds me to work in favour of helping others to have a voice, especially young gay people who still suffer discrimination at school. I feel proud of been a BCN Pride Toastmaster member.

Finally, we had some new guests. I hope to see you soon.

Sant Jordi, Books and Roses

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28 April 2013

Written by Prince Duah

Parles Català? In English it means do you speak Catalá? Well I don´t, but I managed to pass through the rain to last week's Barcelona toastmasters club meeting. Obviously, I was wet when I arrived. I believe my condition inspired them to choose the word of the day “Mullat”. Mullat is a catala word meaning “Wet”.  

Cormac was the toastmaster of the day. He quickly described the program for the day in a mixture of Catala, Spanish, and English. We had two great speeches. Cormac introduced the first speaker Jesus Salillas in his almost flawless Catala accent. “Diaris de Sant Jordi, Jesus Salillas, Jesus Salillas Diaris de Sant Jordi”. Jesus objective was to deliver an entertaining dramatic talk about an experience or incident; He must use vivid imagery, characters and dialogue and deliver the talk in an entertaining manner. He nailed it. Although I didn´t understand Catala, I felt the strong emotion he transmitted when he delivered the speech and the way he dramatized every sentence was just amazing.

The second speech was delivered by our own Robert Ferrer, “Cercant Cavallers al 2013” another great speech. The purpose of the speech was to persuade and inspire, align the audience goals with speech objective, deliver a motivational speech and influence an audience to a specific action. By the time he had ended the speech, I was transfixed.

We moved on to the most exciting part of the toastmaster session, The Table Topics. With a round of applause we welcomed the table topic master of the day, Lorena. She presented three of her most cherished works, a book she has just written and two paintings which the volunteers were asked to give or offer their opinion. 

The session was almost coming to an end and it was now the turn of the general evaluator David Sanchez to give report of how the session went. He called on his team the Time keeper and the grammarian to give their report.

Soon afterwards, Cormac took over to wrap up the session.

It was a great experience for me to be part of the session. After the session, if you would ask me again Parles Catala? I would answer you, Una Mica. Cheers!

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Todo está planificado

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21 April 2013

Una semana más, otra gran sesión de Tostmaster Pride BCN, y si algo está bien planificado en toastmaster es su formato, un formato en el que aprendes mientras lo pasas bien.

Y curiosamente, en esta sesión, la palabra del día fue “planificar”, concepto que fue apareciendo durante toda la sesión.

En primer lugar, David, dirigió la sesión como Toastmaster del día, fue su primera experiencia como toastmaster y si bien tuvo algunas dudas, manejo la sesión excelentemente siguiendo la planificación y tiempos previstos.

Respecto a los speakers, Gabriel, nos explico cómo se organizan el reciclado de basuras que cada uno de nosotros tiramos a los containers y nos animó a planificar más nuestra gestión de desechos para reciclar más.

Tamara, La segunda speaker, nos explico algunas anécdotas divertidas sobre sus experiencias en diversos lavabos del mundo y nos acabó recomendando que tuviéramos en cuenta este aspecto al planificar nuestro próximo viaje.

Por último, Iñaki, el tercer speaker, que se prepara para participar en el concurso de distrito, no ofreció un discurso muy emocional, en el que se nota que lo ha trabajado y ha planificado hasta el último detalle de su discurso.

Y por último durante el Table topics, el lugar por excelencia para no planificar sino todo lo contrario, dejarse ir e improvisar, Prince nos preparó varias preguntas muy originales como “¿dónde irías si fueras invisible? ”, o “¿con quien te reencarnarías?”

Resumiendo, todo en Toastmaster está planificado para que cada sesión sea un éxito, todos aprendamos un poquito y lo hagamos de manera divertida y entretenida.

A chocolate evening

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7 April 2013

Written by Gabriel Bau

In this occasion, we had an evening covered with chocolate thanks to our Toastmaster Ethel Bermejo and her Easter chocolate eggs.

 First of all, I would like to congratulate our colleague Alexander Raspopov for being chosen to represent the Area H2 in next Division Contest.

In addition, I would like to share with you some of the key takeaways from our last spirited meeting.

• If you need any advice on getting a TIN (taxpayer Identification Number) to your Club, please ask Pilar de Obeso. As she explained to us, she knows all the nitty-gritty details.
• We must remember the importance of pause to allow the audience to create the image of what the speaker is trying to communicate.
• The best way to motivate the audience is look for what interests them.
• Table Topics seem to be easier if they are developed from photos rather than from texts.
• Ryszard Kapuściński, a great reporter and a reference for our speaker Marc Noguera.
• Our Fun Team is working with our suggestions and will soon propose voting democratically which ones we prefer.

Finally, we must still be patient with the use of the word of the day. On this occasion, it was “PATIENCE/PACIENCIA” and was seldom used.

Special thanks to our guests. We hope to see you again soon.