Division E Humorous and Table Topics Contest

Division E contest of Humorous and Table Topic speeches took place on 22nd of November. Our club was well represented: Michelle and Hicham were competing in the Humorous contest while Margherita was competing in the Table Topics contest. This was not the easiest Division contest, as English-speaking competition consisted of 8-9 participants in each category while many of participants had significant contest experience.

We can all be proud of our Zuriberg contestants, as they have improved significantly from the Area level and were totally committed to give their best performance on the Division stage.

Now regarding the results. We have one Zuriberg member who was placed among the three contest winners. Hicham with his humorous speech “The unofficial guide to getting married” became the WINNER OF DIVISION E HUMOROUS CONTEST. His speech was evaluated to be the best among the other eight speeches and he will therefore continue his journey by giving his winning speech during the District 59 Fall Conference in Madrid taking place 11-13 of November.

Please join me in congratulating Michelle, Margherita and Hicham on their achievements!

Area E4 Contest October 11th – what a great evening!

Dear Zuriberg Toastmatsers.

What a great evening it was last Tuesday !

As the chief judge for the English contest, I arrived at 18:00. The room was still empty apart from tables and chairs. Within minutes people started arriving and the room was quickly filling up. What an excitement and what a buzz! There were people from many other clubs, some participating as speakers, others supporting their speakers or as guests. I counted 43 people, with 5 or 6 other clubs present.

The vibration increased in the room as everyone said to old and new friends. As the Judges, contestants, timers etc were being briefed and visitors welcomed.
What an energy in the room.

We enjoyed such wonderful speeches, three in English and one in German. All amazingly well delivered, funny and full of energy.

What followed was the table topics contest. How well this was done by every participant! Just imagine impromptu speaking in a contest.
And the winners of the Humorous speech contest are….. # 1 Hicham and #2 Michelle of our Zuriberg club !

Let me tell you, because if you were not there you surely missed something. Michelle delivered the speech that she first tried-out in the workshop several weeks ago. So great to see how her story had progressed from just a few ideas then into a wonderful speech. Thank you Michelle.

And the winner? Our Hicham! How proud he can be for the speech he delivered. What progress Hicham has made since he joined our club. So well delivered this story funny and sad at the same time.

Congratulations to Margherita for winning the table topics. So good to see how she fearlessly approached the table topic contest and delivered her speech in her own natural way.

Special thanks go to Stefano, the contest chair. The weeks before the contest he had been preparing diligently, making sure everyone knew what was expected of him/her. And on Tuesday night he guided us through the evening with his Italian flair and energy that made this evening for everyone a success.

Best Regards
Ben Nordemann

Area E4 – International Speech and Evaluation contests

Zuriberg Toastmasters Club is very proud to host the International Speech and Evaluation contests for Area E4.

Contests:
We are hosting four contests:
1.  International Speech contest in German
2.  International Speech contest in English
3.  Evaluation contest in German
4.  Evaluation contest in English

Date and time:
29th March with registration from 6:15pm

Location:
Blue Monkey Restaurant
Zunftsaal
Stüssihofstatt 3
8001 Zürich

Agenda (DRAFT):
18:30                 Briefing for contestants

18:30                 Briefing for judges, time keepers and counters

18:15 – 19:00    Registration and Order Dinner
Click <here> for the full agenda details

Cost:
Please purchase a meal for dinner or pay a CHF20 cover charge. Attendees are politely reminded that the room hire is covered against the cost of a meal and Zuriberg covers all other costs. This requirement is waived for contestants.

Questions:
Please contact one of the contest coorganizers.
Karina Castella (karina.castella@gmail.com)
Tim Birch (tim.birch.tmi@gmail.com)

Many thanks and we very much look forward to welcoming you to the International Speech and Evaluation Contests

Storytelling Workshop (Pimp your story and make it stick)

Zuriberg Toastmasters Club is very proud to host a special workshop about storytelling
on 2nd February 2016 (with registration from 18:30)

Workshop
Have you ever wondered how to make your stories stick?

Are you a toastmaster trying to create impact and ready to step out and share your story? Whether you’re preparing for your icebreaker or or delving into one of the many advanced manuals, wouldn’t it be great to have a way of creating content that people easily understand and gets them so excited that they run off and share your stories with the world? What if they could remember you and your project in easy and fun ways that engage other people and help them figure out what they want and why your project is so important to them? 

If all of this would interest you, Storytelling made Simple has been waiting for you. Using a simple story telling framework that is based in cognitive science and naturally organizes information in a way that is easy to digest for people’s brains, we will take your stories and turn them from Fiat Pandas into Ferraris or from Porsches into Electric cars (depending on your distinguished taste and purpose).

Registration:
Members of Zuriberg should register their attendance via easySpeak (click here), other Toastmaster members, could you send a short email to Tim Birch (tim.birch.tmi@gmail.com) including confirmation of your club name.

Full Details of the workshop click here

Christmas Edition club meeting (Dec 8th)

Zuriberg Toastmasters invites you to a special “Christmas Edition” meeting on Tuesday, 8th of December.
This will be a dynamic and exciting evening with a Christmas quiz with prizes for winners, drinks (wine) and desert sponsored by the club, inspirational speeches and more.
Nicola will give a presentation about the toastmasters opportunities beyond the initial Competent Communicator (CC) track. After following the narrow canal of the Competent Communicator track, aspiring toastmaters enter open waters of Advanced Communication Manuals. Nicola will provide guidance in navigating your way through advanced manuals to achieve your specific speaking goals and to further strengthen your confidence on stage.
We are very fortunate to have Lesley as the hostess of the evening. In additional to being professional speaker and trainer, Lesley is also an expert in conducing fund raising events. If you are looking for a public speaking inspiration, observe how effortlessly Lesley will guide us through the evening and influence the mood of the audience with just a few opening words.
One of the youngest members of our club, Jessica, will give her first “Ice Breaker” speech. Last but not least, an experienced member Tim will deliver his final speech from the CC track. Tim prepared a speech to inspire and will demonstrate all speaking tools that he learned and practiced in his exciting toastmasters journey.
Join us for this evening of celebration, learn new skills and challenge yourself, and above all – have lots of fun.
Venue
Where: Blue Monkey restaurant (Stüssihofstatt 3, Zurich), 2nd floor.
When: Tuesday, 8th of December, 18:45 – 21:30

Upcoming meeting on 10th of November

We are very excited to invite you to the upcoming meeting of Zuriberg Toastmasters club on 10th of November.

This is the evening not to miss!

We expect a perfect blend of 3 speeches from beginning, middle and finale of the Competent Communicator (CC) speech track. This is a rare opportunity to observe how level of speaking techniques grows during the Toastmasters journey.

One of our most skilled members, Kevin, will give his final (tenth) speech from the CC track. Many of current club members were inspired to join the club by his growth as a speaker. He will give an inspirational speech on the topic that he personally is very interested about. Some of our club members may even change their travel schedules to watch this speech alone!

But it gets even better! As a general evaluator of the evening we are excited to expect our club founder, Lesley, who is a professional speaker and trainer, winner of several European speaking competitions, and one of the most skilled speakers in Switzerland. We will not only hear, but experience her powerful speaking style and will get her advice on giving feedback and the evening in general.

On top of this we have a team of experienced members to facilitate the evening and to make it dynamic and fun. Joining us is a wonderful way to get to know new interested people with international experience.

We are a dinner club and there will be Asian fusion food offered around 8PM, so come hungry! This offers our guests and members the complete evening experience with both fun agenda and a nice dinner in a company of like-minded people.

This meeting will take place in Blue Monkey restaurant on the 3rd floor on
Tue, November 10, 6:45pm – 9:45pm
Address: Blue Monkey, Stüssihofstatt 3, 8001 Zurich

Toastmaster event 09 June 2015

The meeting on the 9th June was another successful and outstanding night. Although the venue was moved to the top floor, people’s passion was not being impaired – more than 20 members and guests attended the meeting on such a lovely summer evening.

The key word of the evening was ‘surprisingly’ – indeed surprisingly three of the speeches are all for manual 2 – “to organize your speech.”

The meeting started with the speech from Anna Korovatskaya -who led us to her journey ‘search for meaning’. Anna’s speech focused on her personal experiences – from her childhood dream of longing for a pair of Western Jeans, to her dreams came to – a happy marriage, a nice flat and a good job. Then Anna realized that happiness is not just about to fulfil your material needs, its more about the happiness inside. Its not an easy journey, Anna had the courage to reveal to the audiences about the shadow in the past, and how she faced it and fought it. At the end, Anna told us ‘happiness is not something to search for, it’s something you can create’.

Another two speeches are rather scientific but still interesting. Julia gave us an insight about the theoretical background of Genetic Modified Organism, and the benefits for producing GMO crops for human beings. She also added scientific proofs making her speech more convincing.

Etienne gave us the speech about Money. His speech shared a lot of knowledge about the histories and functions behind the money. He even brought a gold bar trying to demonstrate the value of money.

The table topic for that night was really a nerve breaking one. Everyone had to answer some unexpected questions from children about “Why?”. Our friend from toastmaster Barcelona club was asked ‘Why does rain smells funny?”. She provided the answer with “all rain smells funny, but they smell differently, the rain smells nice in the country side and smells bad in the city.” That is a quite environmental concept.

The highlight of the evening was from our guest Daniela. She was asked by “why the leaves turned red in the autumn?” Daniela gave the most impressive table topic speech I have ever seen. She illustrated that 4 seasons represents four different ladies. E.g The lady from spring is young and dynamic; the lady from summer is fertile and mature. While the lady from autumn is a witch who want to show people all the colours of the world before winter is coming. The speech is full of imagination. Also the language and the emotion in the speech was excellent!!

Followings table topics were: Kevin answered “why chickens have no toe” by given the fact that he used to have “chicken script” in his writing. Tatyana demonstrated that human beings have toes because they need to do yoga and their need to paint their toenails to look sexier.

The best speaker of the night was Anna Korovatskaya, the best evaluator was Katarina Korzova,  and the best table topics is Daniela.IMG_0604

 

WORKSHOP ON EVALUATION – On Tuesday 26th May 2015

On Tuesday 26th May 2015 Lesley Stephenson will coach a special educational session on “How to evaluate”. This will be a very instructive workshop for all.

Providing critical feedback in a constructive and supportive manner is a cornerstone of Toastmasters. A well delivered evaluation not only motivates the speaker to continue onto their next project but the evaluator learns some invaluable leadership skills.

The workshop will be held in the Carolistube of the Blue Monkey.

This is a great opportunity to improve your evaluation skills – so don’t miss it!

A little about Lesley Stephenson:
For those members, who many not already know Lesley, she is an international keynote speaker and communications expert. As a sought-after corporate trainer, Lesley helps hundreds of clients each year to reach communication excellence. We are truly privileged that Lesley will be sharing her experience and knowledge.
Tim Birch