Every first and third Wednesday (and if the month has 5 weeks – also on the fifth Wednesday) Munich Prostmasters club meets to have fun, learn and grow together!
During the last year, pandemic, we would meet comfortably in the front of the web camera on the Zoom call – people would join from across the globe! Since July 2021 we finally got a chance to meet in person – with limited participants and under current Corona rules – to keep everyone safe. And while we all have been exceptionally happy to finally meet after a year of virtual meetings – Munich Prostmasters club has decided to keep Zoom calls as well and run our meetings in Hybrid form!
July 21st has been our second hybrid meeting – and it was simple UNIQUE, as every single Prostmasters meeting is! Technology meets people – that could have been the motto of the evening. Numerous webcams guaranteed exceptional image quality, PCs, tablet, beamer, microphone, high speed internet – combined with highly dedicated officer team – this is the recipe of success!
Our members and guests have joined in the Freiraum center, and online – dialing in from New Jersey, Frankfurt and Munich. As we all learned to conduct the effective online meetings we are now stepping up to the next challenge – run effective meetings in hybrid mode interacting with both online and offline audience!
The evening was truly inspiring, as was the World of the Day, introduced by Navin. The one who uses the word “INSPIRING” most of the times throughout the meeting will be the winner. Yet why is the winner the one who gets to pay for a beer for everyone once we meet for the dinner?
Christopher, The Joke of The Evening Master, ZOOMing in from New Jersey brought us a joke highlighting that perhaps “phenomenal eyesight as that of 20-years old” is not enough to do good when the good memory is missing. Good start, and also a timely reminder for the blogger to open up the PC and start taking notes!
With Mel Kelly as Toastmaster of the Evening we have enjoyed 1.5 hours full of fun, laughter and international humor – best of Irish man in the heart of Munich.
Haiyi brought us very thoughtful table topics, closely aligned with what concerns us recently. We had Ineke, Martin, Craig and Oscar speaking about the climate change, the doom and gloom feeling, our responsivity and the ability of the society as whole to pull together and make incredible changes.
Francesca opened the prepared speech section with the “Jenga slicing”. It has been colorful and brilliant, a Jenga Tower serving as visual metaphor for a working day. Francesca inspired us all to step back and win perspective, while slicing the problems until they get smaller and more manageable.
Fabio with the speech “Watch what you’re doing” thought us how to focus and make life easier. The Kolbe A test, time boxing (meditating, journaling, walking, playing instrument, playing chess and coming here to give the speech…how to squizze it all in?), no “To Do Lists”, rather Focusmate app. Tech meets Italian passion – and last resort being “go to mama and get a hug”
Isil (really Isil – we missed you, how nice to have you back!) took it as General evaluator and perfectly nailed down the main challenge our Hybrid meetings have: keeping the eye contact with the onsite audience and with online participants. Yeah, we got to work on it!
Amazing set of evaluators: Ineke, Ron, the AH-Counter Martin (who calls all those “ahms, and “umhs” the rhetorical prosthetics) and last but not least – our GUEST Carolin who took a role of TIMER of the evening. Indeed, timing people in Prostmasters is a challenge, timing Ineke, a DTM (stands for Distinguished Toastmaster) – in Inekes words, “Do not Time Me” is a double challenge!
Finally we all celebrated Rish who recently became a DTM as well! In Rish’es words: “it Takes a Village To Grow Someone” – we could say – “It Takes A Prostmasters Club to Grow DTMs”! Well done Rish and all Prostmasters members!
Munich Prostmasters is meeting on August 4th – will you join us online or onsite? Whatever you choose – we are committed to make it an equally positive, unique, impactful and inspiring experience!
