We Toastmasters love speaking and crave stage time. Our lovely VP Education Wendy knows it and organized for us a wonderful a Speech-A-Thon, i.e. a speech marathon (the running shoes were not required!), i.e. an evening only with speeches and their evaluations.
Matthias MK and Lukacs hold their Icebreaker speeches. Matthias MK told us about three points of his bucket list: to sail the Atlantic Ocean on a sailing boat, to become a self-employed writer and to become a great speaker. After accomplishing the first two, he joined Mercury in order to work on the third point 🙂
Lukacs shared with us in a humorous way the different ways of writing his name. He also let us know about his different personalities when he speaks in German, English or Hungarian.
Petronela gave her second speech on happiness from the CC manual entitled “Unexpected Map”. She shared with us her volunteering experience in Kiev, Ukraine. There she started the social project “Map me Happy”, where people in a community can share their positive experiences in their environment. Petronela ended the speech wonderfully with the sentence “People can help people make their city a better place to live”.
Lena delivered Project #3 from the CC manual entitled “The upside down tree”. She told us the story of the baobab – the upside-down tree. The baobab used to complain a lot and the God, exasperated of its complains, replanted it upside down. With the mouth full of dirt, the baobab was not able to complain any more. Thus from that day since, the baobab has been unable to complain. Starting and finished the speech with a personal example, Lena mentioned it is our choice if we search for small imperfections or we are happy with what we have. The speech was entertaining and very well delivered.
Our last speaker was the Competent Communicator Marina who told us about the “Optimal experience”. She delivered the Project #3 – Persuade and Inspire from the Speeches by Management manual. She shared some “tools” to make a normal day a great one: focus 3 minutes a day, make a (boring) task a game, mare routine work a treat or turn off your notifications. “We are the captain of our dramaboat”.
The meeting was filled with happiness, fun and joy. Hearty thank you to Wendy, to all who helped organize this meeting and to the speakers who took the time to prepare and provide us with outstanding presentations.
The next Speech-a-Thon will be on the 17th of June. We look forward to seeing you there.
