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Meetings

Aloha!

When Ron plans, he executes! 4 special meetings planned for 2022-23 and we finished off in style with the last special evening themed on Hawaii!

Ron opened the meeting online with a Hawaiian vibe and sea background. He also took us remotely on a spiritual journey!

Mikaela came sartorially dressed and presented the word of the day in style. I loved the way the Word was visible for the audience and the speaker to see and use. Mikaela’s extra round where she asked people to identify “Who said it?” was loved when combined with chocolate. But did we stand a chance against the Mohit the listener!

Therese started off her Table topics round with some relative psychology. We mused about our favourite colour, animal and water body!

Jasmin ran the General evaluation in style. She even organised a best dressed Hawaiian Prostmaster and Mikaela bagged that award.

And we had a record number of guests! (two of them are signing up). Can we sign up Pluto (the dog)?

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Meetings

Club meeting @ 7 Jun, 2023

Ron, our president, opened the meeting by greeting so many guests (7 present on site and  1 online) in our club’s history since Corona! 

The meeting’s moderation was then handed over to Armin, the Toastmaster of the evening. He emphasised that Toastmasters offers supportive and positive learning environments to all members and this is how we all can grow by learning from one another. He didn’t forget to mention that Pluto, Jasmin’s dog, was also our special guest this evening. 

Ashwini was then invited onto the stage to introduce our Word of the Day “evocative”, which means “making you remember or imagine something pleasant”. 

Veniece brought some interesting evocative thoughts about ChatGPT to the meeting right away during her Joke of the Day: why Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not destroy humanity. 

Afterwards, Mikaela, the Table Topics Master, brought us some questions from the past Table Topics Contests to be tried out. Mohit, Golf, Omar and Ryan were the lucky participants who delivered their thoughts towards “the round earth”, “importance of deadlines”, “elbow society”, and “the meaning of red colour”. 

Ranjith then delivered his prepared speech with the title “Motivate to shine”. He started the speech saying that shoes need love and motivation to be able to shine brightly. In the same way, his life in our Toastmasters world has always been motivated to shine by several members and club officers. He also stated his official appreciation towards all members of the Officer’s Team 2022, who kept the club business running very smoothly during the course of the year.  

The second prepared speech with the title “Becoming a leader” was delivered by Divij. He told us some personal stories about his own leadership style. “One can not lead others, if he can not lead himself.” was an evocative idea he quoted at the end of his speech. 

Tobias then took over the stage for the third prepared speech of the evening with the title “It’s just me: Me, myself and AI.” He played with the famous phrase from Latin “Cogito, ergo sum.”, which means “I think, therefore I am.” in English. The speech used the structure of “Past-Present-Future”, with which Tobias explained the ways people thought, think and will possibly think about themselves in the past, present and future respectively. The closing message was memorable and evocative, because he stated that our society would become a better place, if we human beings think more about other people and less about ourselves. 

The evaluation session was moderated by Mikaela, our General Evaluator of the evening. She started the session by mentioning that “We don’t learn from experiences, but from reflecting on those.”

All three speech evaluators – Christopher, Therese and Dharani – gave their subjective feedback to all three prepared speakers as breakfast for champions. 

Ashwini then gave his grammarian report by starting with mentioning people who used the word of the day, then repeating some nice sentences picked up during the meeting, and giving some suggestions to improve the language accuracy. 

Jasmin, our Ah-Counter, gave a brief report about our filler-word performance during the meeting. It just turned out to be quite tolerable in terms of filler words.

Kumar, our Timer, also gave a short report on our time performance. He structured his speech using the three colours “Green-Yellow-Red” to categorise the speakers. 

At the end of this meeting, Mikaela handed the stage back to Armin (as if it was a family business) so that he could moderate the Club Officer’s Election for the 2023-2024 term.  

All the club members then approved of the nomination of the new Club Officer’s Team, more details can be seen in this article. 

This meeting was indeed, as Armin mentioned at the beginning, an evocative demonstration of a “supportive and positive” learning environment according to the Toastmasters way.

By Sirichai Bannasarn

Categories
Announcements

New officer team for 2023-24

Here are the incoming officers for the Toastmasters year 2023-24:

President – Jasmin Ghennam
VP Education – Ranjith Venkatesh
VP Membership – Sirichai Bannasarn (Golf)
VP Public Relations – Divij Wadhawan
Secretary – Tobias Schlosser
Treasurer – Ashwini Navoor
Sergeant-at-Arms – Not decided
Immediate Past President – Ron Fiedler

We are happy to have such a great team to kick off the new Toastmasters year!

Jasmin has been a President of a club before and brings in her experience here (and charm of Pluto)

Ranjith has been President and Area Director and is eager to help the club members set and reach educational goals.

Golf has been VP Membership before and is bringing in those strategies to beat last year’s record.

Divij is new to being an officer and has exciting outdoor ideas for the Prostmasters.

Tobias has been District Director and we will have an inhouse consultant on Toastmasters workings.

Ashwini is new to being an officer and ready to take care of our treasure chest.

Ron as past president will help the new set of officers with the knowledge he has gained through being an officer.

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Contests

Mikaela wins the District Evaluation contest at Aarhus, Denmark

Mikaela Gallon wins the District Evaluation contest for the Munich Prostmasters. With this our club has won the Evaluation contest three times in a row (Member Awards).

Mikaela competed with 8 other Division winners and stood out. I found her calm and poised while she delivered the evaluation speech in her own style.

Go Mikaela!

Categories
Scribbles

Reverse meeting

When Ron puts his mind to it, he executes it!

The Reverse meeting happened on 15th of March, 2023 and it was FUN!

Our guests set the tone for singing and dancing!

Stefan led the General Evaluation round setting challenges for the Toastmasters to come and do things before they thought of it.

Jasmin rapped on stage with Pluto.

Therese counted our Ahs before they happened.

Stefan had 32 Ahs to come up with and reversed every part of his Evaluation.

Mohit gave a yoga pose for Ashwini to close up his speech with.

Dharani did her icebreaker in the middle of all this madness.

Ashwini got the club dancing and doing yoga before talking about hares and tortoises.

Chris put a spring to our Table topics and regaled us with his jokes.

Kumar sure does have a dirty joke up his sleeve.

And Ron can jump real high!

Categories
Announcements

Club contests – 15 Feb, 2023

Thanks to the organizing team of Barbara(VP Education), Ineke (Contest Chair) and Ron (Chief Judge) we had a great club contest on the 15th of Feb, 2023.

Jasmin entertained us with her target speech on getting engaged to her very German boyfriend who cleans better than her and cuddles up with their poodle.

Mikaela and Marco participated in the Evaluation contest and Mikaela won the contest telling us about her experience with her very German husband.

Mikaela, Diogo and Ranjith participated in the Table topics contest and Ranjith won the contest. All of them talked about their favorite things!

Ranjith was the only contestant in the International Speech contest and he stayed on time.

Ranjith will be representing our club in the Table topics and International Speech contest on the 11th of March, 2023 in Augsburg.

Save the date – 11th of March, 2023 to watch four clubs in our area participate in the next level!

Categories
Training

Officer Training @ Ingolstadt

Ron, Darya, Haiyi and Ranjith

Four officers from the Munich Prostmasters made it to Ingolstadt!

Ron and I landed early for the officer training at Ingolstadt last week. The location was great – Technische Hochschule. It felt great to be meeting people live after two years for an officer training. The last time I was in one of them was beginning of 2022 when Mikaela organised one in the European University near Theresienwiese in Munich.

We set up the wall that people know from conferences and I jumped to the opportunity of creating a short teaser for the workshop later that day. Yanti was kind enough to make the video and she sure has a stable hand.

We had fun sessions throughout the afternoon!

Tobias took on a journey about the Distinguished Club plan, Jason on Hybrid meetings and Olga on DTM.

Olga managed to get people together and present their ideas. Two of our officers got their ideas together and presented as part of their teams.

Haiyi explaining how she will take care of members and guests during a Toastmasters conference

Darya in action at the officer training talking about club funds and taxation.

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Meetings

Moments of Truth 2021/22

We had a great time yesterday with Barbara, Isil, Ineke, Ron, Stefan, Chris and Darya discussing what went well in 2021/22 and what could be improved.

We even had two guests Alejandro and Jeff joining us to provide their valuable inputs.

We sat down in a round table and had a discussion over some snacks and continued the discussion later in the local Bavarian restaurant in true Prostmasters style.

We are very proud to have achieved the Select Distinguished Status for the Munich Prostmasters in the year 2021/22 inspite of the challenges we faced.

Wishing the Munich Prostmasters all the best for the year 2022/23!

Survey results summary: Moments of Truth 2022 (google.com)

Categories
Speeches

Understanding communication styles

Ranjith talks about how he was in awe with many people who influenced his communication style as part of the Pathway Motivational Strategies.

Categories
Shorts

First poem that Martin learnt!

Elegy written in a country churchyard by Thomas Gray