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Workshop “Mastering disastering” with Kyle P Bullus

This workshop will help you to avoid presentation disasters such as ‘prop flops’ and ‘vanishing visuals’ as well as giving you confidence to handle the unexpected. You might even learn to have fun with failure. Bring your stories and we’ll work out solutions.

Kyle’s Leadership Experience

Kyle has led workshops in his native country England as well as in Germany, Switzerland and India. He has been independent since 1994 and also freelances for commercial and institutional clients. He serves clients who need communication and presentation coaching.

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Area contest – 10th October 2017

by Michelle Sabatini

What an evening!

Not only the clubs of Area 4 met and competed but also Area 2 joined the evening!

The result was 8 distinct contests during a single, very intense, evening that brought together around 50 members from 7 different clubs!

Margherita Brodbeck Roth and Daniela Ivanovovà chaired the evening with enormous professionalism. The positive energy they invested to organize and manage the evening were highly inspirational.

Margherita guided us through the humorous speech contest in English (one for A4 and one for A2), German and Italian. Daniela challenged the Table Topic Contestants of the 4 contests with 4 different questions:

  • If you were a superhero, which super power you would like to have? (English Contest A4)
  • What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses? (German Contest A4)
  • Where would you like to live if you had to leave this country? (English Contest A2)
  • Statistics says that 6-years-old laugh 300 times a day. Adults laugh 15 times. Why do kids laugh more than adults do? (German Contest A2).

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Zuriberg club contest: Humorous Speech & Table Topics. September 2017

By Mark Cannell 

With Autumn well underway and the darker nights creeping in, what better way to keep up the mood than with a club contest. And boy what a contest it was. On Tuesday 26th September at the usual location at Blue Monkey in Niederdorf, Zuriberg Toastmasters club held their Humorous and Table Topics Speech contest in English.

The evening began with the Humorous Speech competition and all five participants did a highly commendable job with much applause and uproarious laughter from the audience. For some it was their first time conducting their humorous speech, whilst others were veterans, but all succeeded in entertaining the audience. Margherita Brodbeck Roth was the contest chair and did an excellent job at guiding us through the evening. Well done to Hicham Adamou coming in first place, Stefano Ortelli coming in second and Michelle Sabatini in third.

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Let’s toast to a welcome back from our summer break

by Margherita Brodbeck Roth 

After a long and for most of us relaxing summer break we have resumed our regular sessions on Ferragosto.  The day goes back to the “feriae Augusti”, celebrated across the Roman empire to remember the victory of the first roman emperor Augustos over Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra. With Chrisitanity it became the day when Catholics celebrate Assumption day and in today’s Italy it is when the large companies and government office go on holiday – and all stands still..  

We are different, to us it has been the day of return, to enjoy each other’s company, to welcome guests and to enjoy two fantastic speeches and a very original table topic setting. Our grammarian kicked us into dhspr when sharing the word of the day, – haughty (arrogantly superior or disdainful) with its remote origin in the Latin “altus” or high. An high we went and grabbed for the stars. 

After a first speech asking for more, Lesley Stephenson stood up to the challenge of holding an impromptu stalk on a meaningful but also controversial topic. In “What we can do to revert global warming” we learned so much stretching from the slightly amusing – stop drinking alcohol because we happen to generate heat in the course of it –, to the more serious aspects of the matter. She truly not only enlightened but also entertained us. Moreover, she graciously shared some valuable suggestions on how to succeed at public speaking.  

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A lot of new members

At the beginning of this year we had a lot of new members, and most probably a few more will join in the next weeks.

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A new year, a new challenge

Last year, we had to find a new venue for the first two months in 2017 since our regular place is being renovated. At first, everything went incredibly smoothly: a venue was rapidly found, and our stuff deposited. Relieved, our committee could join the Christmas-Holiday-Crowd.
When all seems too easy to be true, be aware! On our first meeting in 2017, things started to go in an unexpected direction… the room was way too small, and with the 8 guests checking out our club we felt like chicken in a battery farm.
Then the real improvisation started. No, I am not talking about Table Topics. We were short on tables, didn’t have a flipchart for the grammarian and no projector for one of the speakers. This was a true Toastmasters leadership-challenge: Keep up the spirit and don’t start to nag.
Did we manage to do so? Yes, we did. With a helping hand from members and guests, we brought in more tables and chairs and succeeded in setting set up the room in a way that vaguely resembled a meeting room.
Finally, we had a great evening with 4 speeches, many evaluations and of course Table Topics. Some of the guests even came back. This shows: A positive attitude, collaboration and adaptation are the qualities of a winning team – qualities that we cultivate at our club.
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Christmas Dinner Together With The Bombardier Toastmaster Club

The more, the merrier, so what better way to celebrate Christmas than with another Toastmasters Club? Zuriberg TM decided to join forces with Bombardier CH TM. We were also honoured to have Bigi Vitolic Koblet as a guest. So it was that on 13 December, 27 Toastmasters gathered in a room whose tables had been decorated for the occasion. At Michelle’s request, most of the guests wore suitably festive clothing. Guests had interpreted Michelle’s Christmas dress code (“be creative”) in different ways: There were eye-catching shades of red (Hong, Nicola, Stefano, Alma, Karina, Franziska, Petra, Piotr), amazing jewellery (Michelle, Daniela), Santa Claus hats (Etienne, Stefano, Karolina, Franziska), blinking lights (Margherita, Piotr, Thomas), seasonal neckwear (Ben) and a suit (Paul) which showed that “Toastmasters” is an anagram of “ate most stars”.
Before the evening officially started, old friendships were renewed and new ones made over drinks which had generously been provided. Sergey was unfortunately unable to attend, so his deputy, Nicola, then formally opened the evening. She introduced our Toastmaster of the Evening, Stefano, who led us through the unusual format. The evening began with a keynote speech from Jack Vincent of Zug TM. Jack is an author, sales advisor, speaker and trainer and the lively delivery of his speech entertained the audience and warmed us up for what was to follow.
In the best Toastmasters tradition, the remainder of the evening required participation from us all. First, Karina invited small groups of guests to take the stage for a series of mini debates, each of which was based on a theme related to Christmas. After a break for dinner, Paul invited everyone to play Taboo. The Guessers of the Reindeer and Elves teams (Margherita and Piotr, respectively) did a magnificent job of trying to read the describers’ minds. For the describers, it was like Table Topics, only with 5 Unwords of the Day: they had to try to explain something without using these words and without using body language (unlike Toastmasters speeches). Despite this, almost everyone managed to explain the words which they were given. The contest was very closely fought, but in the end the Reindeers beat the Elves by a very narrow margin.
As those of you who were there or who have seen Massimo’s photographs will know, it was an enjoyable evening with a lot of laughter. Thanks to all who attended and special thanks to all who were involved in the planning and preparations.