Flexibility, adaptability, and resilience—these are the hallmarks of being elastic. Join us for an evening dedicated to expanding our minds, stretching our perspectives, and embracing change in communication.
Event Details
📅 Date: 28th January 2025
🕒 Time: 6:45 PM
📍 Location: Robin’s Bar, Zurich
Meeting Highlights 🧠✨
🔄 Flexible Speeches: Our speakers will explore ideas that challenge the norm and inspire creative problem-solving.
💡 Dynamic Table Topics: Think on your feet and stretch your mental agility with spontaneous challenges.
📝 Insightful Evaluations: Receive constructive feedback that helps you adapt and grow as a communicator.
🤝 Engaging Conversations: Connect with fellow members and explore new ways of approaching challenges.
Featured Quote
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” — Albert Einstein
Join us and discover how being elastic can empower your communication and leadership journey. Whether you’re a seasoned speaker or just starting out, this meeting promises inspiration and growth.
The solstice is a moment of balance and transformation, where light and darkness meet in harmony. Join us for an evening of reflection, connection, and inspiration as we celebrate these themes through the art of communication.
Event Details
📅 Date: 21st January
🕒 Time: 6:45 PM
📍 Location: Robin’s Bar, Zurich
Meeting Highlights 🌄🌌
🌟 Illuminating Speeches: Explore the theme of “Solstice” through inspiring talks that celebrate transitions, balance, and new beginnings.
🤔 Thoughtful Table Topics: Dive into spontaneous speaking challenges inspired by the changing seasons and the solstice spirit.
📝 Constructive Evaluations: Gain valuable feedback from experienced evaluators to refine and enhance your communication skills.
🤝 Engaging Connections: Connect with fellow members in a warm, inviting atmosphere as we reflect on growth and renewal.
Featured Quote
“The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination.” — Gary Zukav
Let’s gather to celebrate the magic of the solstice and the power of communication. Whether you’re a seasoned speaker or new to Toastmasters, this meeting is the perfect way to illuminate your speaking journey. 🌅✨
Step into the spotlight this holiday season as we bring a touch of drama to our Toastmasters stage! Join us for ameeting where we’ll explore the art of storytelling, theatrical expressions, and powerful communication.
📅 Date: 10th December 2024 🕒 Time: 6:45 PM 📍 Location: Zum Königsstuhl
What to Expect:
Dramatic Speeches: Our speakers will captivate you with performances that bring stories to life through passion, suspense, and flair.
Theatrical Table Topics: Get ready for impromptu challenges that will have you channeling your inner actor while embracing the festive spirit.
Seasonal Cheer: Enjoy the warmth of the holiday season with a sprinkle of dramatic flair, festive decor, and camaraderie.
Featured Quote: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” – William Shakespeare
Celebrate the magic and the power of drama in communication. Let’s make this meeting a performance to remember!
Join us next Tuesday as we dive into the theme of “Blissful” and celebrate the joy, peace, and contentment that can be found in both life and communication. This meeting will be filled with positive energy and the vibrant colors of autumn!
Date: Tuesday, October 15th Time: 6:45 PM Location: Zum Königsstuhl
Meeting Highlights:
Blissful Speeches: Our speakers will share moments of pure bliss and personal joy, reflecting on what brings them true happiness.
Joyful Table Topics: Participate in spontaneous speaking challenges that will have you exploring your sources of delight and serenity.
Supportive Evaluations: Receive feedback that encourages you to embrace and express your most authentic self.
Featured Quote: “Happiness is not a destination, it’s a way of life.”
Come ready to share and embrace the joy within, as we reflect on the moments that make life blissful.
Join us for our next Toastmasters meeting, where we dive into the theme of being “Anchored.” This meeting is all about finding stability, grounding ourselves, and staying firm in our convictions while navigating the tides of communication.
Date: Tuesday, October 8th Time: 6:45 PM Location: Zum Königsstuhl
Meeting Highlights:
Anchored Speeches: Our speakers will deliver strong, rooted messages, reflecting on moments where staying grounded made all the difference.
Steady Table Topics: Prepare for impromptu speaking that will challenge you to remain composed under pressure, even when the conversation drifts.
Insightful Evaluations: Receive feedback that helps you anchor your communication style with confidence and clarity.
Featured Quote: “In the storm, we learn the true strength of our anchor.”
Come ready to explore how being anchored can empower your communication and leadership!
One of our smaller meetings this year. But nevertheless full of energy, fun, and learning!
Let me remind you first about the announcements we made.
Base Camp Outage
There will be a Base Camp outage beginning on October 9, 2024, that is expected to last through October 25, 2024.
If you’re working on a project you may want to reference in that time frame, we recommend you download the project PDF by using the Print My Project link on the Your Evaluation page of your project. Plan to download any needed materials or wrap up any loose ends before Base Camp is inaccessible.
Completion certificates – While progress and credit will be transferred to the new system, certificates will not. If you would like copies of certificates you have earned, download and save them.
Additionally, to ensure your education progress is up-to-date and accurate when you log into the new system, ask your club officer to approve any pending Level completions and submit them on Club Central before October 9.
Contests
International Speech Contest will be held on 14 January 2025. All members, who have completed Level 2 are eligible to compete in this contest.
Table Topics and Evaluation Contests will be held on 11 February 2025. All members are eligible to compete it these contests.
The District will also hold an Online speech contest this year. We’ll figure out the details in due course and arrange a contest evening for this event.
Judging Workshop
Due to disruption caused by Covid, clubs, areas, divisions, and districts turned to online / hybrid judging models. The downside of this is that judging experience in clubs suffered. Roland and I will present a judging workshop in November to prepare our members for judging contests at the club and beyond. I hope to fill all judging slots from within our club, to give our members the necessary experience to also be able to judge outside the club in future. Date will be announced in next few days.
Grammarian Pietro explaining the word of the day
Reflections on our meeting
Toastmaster of the Evening, Joran conducted the meeting. He introduced each participant with an intro reflective of the theme of the evening: acrobatic. And each participant had their own interesting take on the question he posed them.
We listened to three excellent speeches. Gabriel’s ‘My wife ate the whole jar of Nutella’, dealing with don’t believe everything you hear. Anna spoke about her experiences as both a mentee and mentor in ‘Unexpected Learnings’. And, finally, Ishan proposed that God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence is being challenged in ‘God has competition’. Our three evaluators, Nicola, Tatyana, and Etienne, provided constructive and useful feedback to our speakers. Topicsmaster, Roberta, challenged us with acrobatic themed topics, resulting in some interesting and humorous presentations.
Timekeeper, Zsolt, Ah-counter, Samira, and Grammarian, Pietro all did great jobs to keep us on time, and have us watch our ums, ahs, and p’s and q’s. In perhaps a first for the club, General Evaluator, Fereshteh, had opportunity to criticise herself. Having forgotten to turn her phone on silent, it started ringing midway through Gabriel’s speech… Gabriel, handled it like a pro. A reminder perhaps to all to ensure that phones are either switched off or in silent mode when we have speakers on stage.
Awards
Best Speaker: Anna
Best Table Topics: Harry
Best Evaluator: Etienne
Our next meeting is on Tuesday 8 October. We’re looking forward to seeing you all there.
Next Tuesday, join us as we dive into the world of balance, agility, and flexibility—both on stage and in communication! This acrobatic-themed meeting will challenge us to think on our feet, adapt quickly, and deliver our speeches with finesse.
Thank you Zuribergers for another fun evening and thank you Fereshteh, our Toastmaster of the evening, for taking on the challenge for the first time and organizing a flawless evening!
Speakers
We had three speakers this evening: Vanessa, Roland and Vadim. Vanessa gave us her “Hiking 102” speech for the second time, complete with backpack, hiking poles, and other equipment. It was an excellent use of props to support her message. We learned some tips on how to pare down the weight of our hiking packs, while leaving room for non-essential essentials : in Vanessa’s case – a small bottle of Greek olive oil 🙂 Roland began his speech by apologizing for choosing a boring topic “Patient Directives as a form of digital self-determination in e-Health”. His project involved a speech followed by 13 minutes of Q&A, which we could easily have extended to half an hour, because it turns out his topic was not boring at all. We had endless questions about a topic that is relevant to us all – how do we best legally express our medical care wishes in the case that we become incapacitated. Vadim delivered the last speech of the evening “Are you taking the stairs?” a mentoring speech that was well-delivered and earned him his very first Best Speaker ribbon!
Insightful evaluations and challenging table topics
The evaluations were also high quality, with Tatyana even relying on the new FREEE technique we learned during our improv workshop in August to evaluate Vanessa. It reminded us that evaluators can focus on many different aspects of a speech, including breathing technique.
Thank you Suavek for the challenging and “extremely complicated” (to quote Joran, our General Evaluator for the evening) table topics of the evening. We will miss you and hope you come back soon.
Congratulations Vadim on winning Best Speaker, Joran for winning best Table Topics, and Tatyana for winning best evaluator!
Announcement: novice speech competition
As I mentioned in the meeting and on WhatsApp, there is a novice speech competition taking place on October 26th (online) and November 23rd (in-person finals). This is a Switzerland-wide speech competition open to everyone who hasn’t yet completed Level 2 of a path. It is an excellent opportunity to get some competition practice in and get to know some Toastmasters outside of our club. If you would like to participate, please let me know asap.
Join us for a special Toastmasters meeting where we embrace the power of tolerance. In a world that grows more diverse every day, the ability to listen, respect, and communicate across differences is more important than ever.
Date: 10th September 2024 Time: 6.45 pm Location: Zum Königsstuhl Theme: “Tolerance”
Meeting Highlights:
Speeches Celebrating Diversity: Our speakers will explore how tolerance shapes our personal and professional lives, offering insights on how open communication fosters understanding.
Inclusive Table Topics: Take part in impromptu speaking sessions designed to challenge your perspectives and build bridges across differences.
Constructive Evaluations: Receive feedback that strengthens your ability to communicate with empathy and respect.
Featured Quote: “Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.” — Robert Green Ingersoll
Join us as we celebrate the beauty of diversity and learn how tolerance can help us grow, connect, and lead in a more inclusive world.
It’s been almost a week since we enjoyed a truly energizing workshop with Tara Brodin, a talented Canadian improv and acting instructor who lives right here in Zurich! We all owe our thanks to Vanessa Stournari, our immediately past president, and her months-long effort to make this workshop a reality.
Tara reminded us that great speeches are made up of a lot more than just well-structured sentences and paragraphs. In fact, only 7% of the message an audience receives comes from words, while the vast majority of communication is actually transmitted through body language and the tone of our voice. With Tara we all stood in a circle and explored the range of our voices with handy techniques and acronyms such as FREEE (Feel, Respirate, Elevate, Energize, Enjoy). For those of you who couldn’t make it, ask fellow members for some tips!
Tara is a founder and director at the close encounter theater –https://www.closeencounterstheatre.com/ – and offers improv and acting courses. Quite a few of our members have taken part in her classes in the past (Vanessa, Elias, Alice, Tatyana & more).
In addition, at the beginning of the meeting, we were able to listen to a brief presentation by Stephanie Chen, Toastmasters’ District 89 Finance Director, who gave us a glimpse of the wealth of TM clubs that exist in China. It was a reminder that we are part of a vast ecosystem of speech lovers here at Toastmasters, and that “Toastmasters Tourist” (where TM members systematically attend toastmasters meetings in every city they visit), is real and a cool way to travel.
Now – what can you do to practice all those new skills Tara brought to your attention? You can sign up for roles and, in particular, speeches! Tomorrow is a committee meeting, so you have plenty of time to sign up and prepare a speech for next Tuesday, September 10th! See you then!
Your VPE,
Anna Franzen
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