Author: zuriberg

Educational Achievements

1. Celine Horan (past Area E2 Governor) earned the Advanced Leader Silver award. 
2. Nicola von Lutterotti (VP Membership), Piotr Skozcylas (Secretary), Marcel Cattin (former VP Education), Lip-Hong Teo (former Treasurer), and Olivia Coker (President) earned the CC award.
3. Markus Kuenkel (current Area E2 Governor) and Olivia Coker earned the CL award.

New Members, 9

Giorgio Ripamonti
David Kearney
Noah Pikes
Elena Savenko
Mai Thanh Quynh Tran
Thomas Portenseigne
Christina Ehlers
Vaclav Matousek
Yujing Liu

COMMITTEE/Leadership Achievements

1. Christian Funke (Treasurer) and I (Olivia) created this club website and blog in July 2012.
2. The committee subsequently established the “Blog Contributor” role. This not only keeps our website up to date, but makes it possible for members to complete one of two CL projects which were previously impossible to complete without undertaking a special project. (And therefore hardly anyone finished the CL manual.)
3. In addition to regular debates, we have now instituted regular speech marathons, to give members the chance to catch up on speech progress, (because we meet only on alternate weeks).
4. Nick Allan was selected from among a multitude of applicants to deliver a debate workshop at the European District 59 Conference in Bonn in November 2012.
5. I organized two special events with other clubs, the summer meeting at the Rowing Club with Mosquito Hill, and the Irish-Scottish Dance with Zurich and Mosquito Hill Toastmasters.
6. Henrik Karlsson is now also dedicating months of time as Chair of the Swiss Division E Conference Committee, leading our club in organizing and hosting the April 27th conference.
7. David Ermen conducted two officer workshop sessions (training officers from 4-5 clubs) for our Area Governor, Markus Kuenkel.
8. We updated our meeting evaluation forms, to assist with more concrete speech assessment guidelines. This has elicited more grounded and useful feedback for speakers.
9. Michelle Sabatini (SAA) has improved on the organization of our club materials and ensured that every single meeting this term has been properly supplied and arranged, and that guests have been well received. This is essential to our meetings, and the work often goes unnoticed.
10. We moved to the Blue Monkey, after Mara Eugster and I negotiated a minimum consumption rate of less than half their published minimum rate.
11. I created an annual(+) calendar (and our club Google Calendar).
    View or print the club calendar
    *The Easypeak gurus are currently developing the function of linking Easyspeak meetings to Google Calendar. It will reduce calendar input from two to a single entry point. We’ll look forward to that!
12. David Ermen has created club email addresses for each officer to facilitate contact continuity from one officer term to the next.
13. I created new meeting agenda templates in Easyspeak, to make staffing and organizing meetings much faster. These include regular meetings, debates, speech marathons, and the contests.
    Meetings are already scheduled through July 2014, because we must register our meetings at the Blue Monkey a year or more in advance to secure our reservation.
    Meetings are staffed from now through this July in order to give every member a fair opportunity to speak and to perform authoritative meeting roles–Toastmaster of the Evening, Table Topics Master, and General Evaluator–and to assist new members along the trajectory of increasing knowledge.
    Scheduling large batches in advance saves time and makes a more strategically equitable distribution of speeches and roles possible.
14. Christian Funke has been a dependable Treasurer, ensuring that all bills are paid, and dues collected from each member and transferred on time to Toastmasters International. (When dues are not paid on time, our members are not allowed to compete in contests!)
15. Christian is now also Treasurer of the Division E Conference, tracking payment for each registration (100+ attendees).
16. Piotr Skoczylas joined us as Secretary in January 2013, and has since been reliable in taking proper and useful committee meeting minutes and posting them in a timely manner. Piotr also orders club supplies from Toastmasters International.
17. Piotr is currently founding a new TM club at his workplace. Congratulations, Piotr!
18. I uploaded and catalogued all contest materials in our Easyspeak Zuriberg Toastmasters Discussion Forum, so that, from now on, Chairman, Judges, and Contestants can easily download and print the necessary forms.
19. Officers have uploaded club-specific OFFICER role descriptions to make it easier for members to prepare for annual elections and holding office.
20. I have added club-specific MEETING role descriptions to Easyspeak—click on the role title on any agenda page.
    This helps us to clarify formerly ambiguous role responsibilities, particularly those of the TME (who is responsible for ensuring meeting rosters are full), and helps less experienced members to learn our club customs.
21. Ilka Gelhar founded a new TM club at her workplace, and has served this term as officer there. We look forward to seeing more of her in the next term.

Dear Toastmasters and Friends,

What a fantastic party!

When I arrived yesterday to help arrange the Polterkeller for our party, Kristina Koch, Angela Saxby, Laura Beyer, and Mateusz Bukowski were already there, hard at work. This team of organizers has labored diligently behind the scenes for months to prepare a smashing holiday party for Zurich, Mosquito Hill and Zuriberg Toastmasters, for our fellow Toastmasters from Zug, Bern, and St. Gallen, and for our welcome friends. There isn’t enough room to record everything each one has contributed, so I’ll simply point out that without the magnanimous investment of time, talent, and even property, from each of them, our party would have been impossible.

Special kudos to one of our younger Toastmasters, Laura Beyer, whose raffle and dessert buffet last night displayed tremendous creativity, not to mention industry, as she baked and bustled the entire week to dress our tables with irresistible treats and gorgeous raffle bundles.

Big thanks to Frances Turley and William Horan, who shared their stories and a walloping serving of hilarity, and to Kamran Derakhshan, who conducted a feisty and stimulating Table Topics tournament.

Thanks also to Toastmasters who donated raffle prizes: Kristina Koch, Jack Vincent, John Styffe, and Selina Man Karlsson.

Finally, thanks to all of you who simply showed up with your smiles, your social elixirs,  and your dancing shoes, and helped to make it a warm and wonderful evening none of us will ever forget.

Douglas Hope, the Toe for Toe dance leader, told me that 200 years ago, when villagers congregated regularly for Céilidhs, quarrels between friends and neighbors would be forgotten as they danced together. That historical sketch epitomizes the spirit which we hoped to foster between Toastmasters and friends in our three clubs and beyond, when we selected a Céilidh as our holiday party activity for 2012.

So as we conclude a remarkable year and contemplate 2013, I trust we will carry this sense of camaraderie and collaboration between Toastmasters and friends into the new year.

We hope to see all of you again soon,
Olivia Coker
President
Zuriberg Toastmasters

Olivia Coker, Zuriberg Toastmasters’ president, warmly welcomed the members and the guests of the club. She went on reminding everyone about the upcoming deadline of buying tickets for the highly promising Celtic Dance Party of December 1st!

Stefano Basurto (evaluated by William Horan) got the prepared speeches off to an interesting start by describing with vivid colors the challenges of running an inline skating race in London. Illustrating the “rise and fall” in his herculean efforts to stay in the loop and cross the finish line, he suggested that a meaningful challenge is not the one that brings necessarily glory; it suffices to bring enough personal satisfaction. The use of “I” in Stefano’s speech added warmth and sensitivity managing to gain the sympathy of the entire audience in each and every kilometer of his race.

Continuing with another odyssey, Adrian Engler (evaluated by Thomas Koetzsch) described how he quit smoking. Although the vocal variety was the major objective of this 6th speech of Adrian, his witty way of presenting the hyperbole surrounding the behavior of addicted smokers turned his narrative to a first-class humorous speech. However, given so many positive examples as side effects of smoking (boost of productivity, increased concentration following nicotine intake), Adrian left the house amicably wondering whether he has quit smoking by accident.

Henrik Karlssson (evaluated by Olivia Coker) delivered an advanced speech attracting feedback on his story-telling competences. “Now or Later?” was a delicate motivation touch prompting the listener to make the small steps (now or later) which can drive to a great adventure; in this case, a trip around the world. The moral was impeccable, but the climax might have been improved by painting a picture of the trip itself and drawing the audience into it.

The first half of the session was concluded by Christian Funke, whose elegant jokes nicely entertained the audience prior to dinner being served.

Nicholas Allan’s table topics were distinctly easygoing as they reminded me of the sweet kinder garden question “What’s your favorite XYZ?”. Nicholas wanted particularly to know what our favorite film, color, holiday, food, drink, and season were.

Winners of the evening were Kevin Boomsma (Best Evaluator), Paul (?) (Best Table Topic Speaker and guest), and Adrian Engler (Best Speaker).