Toastmasters Italia

Edi­to­riale

The Vision

I see a club. An easy club. Easy to join, where lear­ning is easy, where fun and crea­ti­vity are easy, where eve­ryone stri­ves to improve his own com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and though they take the task seriou­sly they still know how to take it….well…. easy, of course, and enjoy the lear­ning pro­cess, the chal­len­ges, the “out-of-comfort-zoness”. This is our club.

I would like to share this vision with all the mem­bers because the puzzle needs eve­ryone to be com­ple­ted and a club goals achie­ve­ment is the sum of every member’s per­so­nal goals as well.

So let me tell you what  my goals are for next year:

 Qua­lity: because we all want to improve and we all want to enjoy others’ improvement.

Bet­ter spee­ches to be deli­ve­red and to listen to, Work­shops and edu­ca­tio­nals focu­sed on dif­fe­rent topics: liste­ning skills, impro-speeches, table topics, how to eva­luate, body lan­guage etc.

More Com­pe­tent Com­mu­ni­ca­tors tac­kling new manuals pro­jects for new comers to look up to for inspi­ra­tion. Rea­ching the stan­dards requi­red for smooth, stream­li­ned and yet dyna­mic mee­tings with a fast pace and atten­tion to pro­ce­du­res but always with a spar­kle and a sprin­kle of new crea­tive ways and ideas.

Fun: crea­tive peo­ple are abun­dant in our club and they need chan­ces to express them­sel­ves in and out the table topic ses­sion. Moreo­ver, we can­not miss the point that while we are per­for­ming our roles as spea­kers and get­ting the bene­fits from the expe­rience, someone else is wat­ching and they want to be enter­tai­ned, inspi­red, infor­med with gusto if possible.

Visi­bi­lity:

Well, I am a toast­ma­ster member.

Uhm…a toast….what?! What’s that?

How many peo­ple in Milan know what Toast­ma­sters Club is?…do they know it exists a place where they can prac­tice public speaking?

We are the Only club in Italy, this doesn’t make us Uni­que yet!

We are not on the map guys. Rotary club and Lions club are. We are unk­nown to the gene­ral and if you put your TM achie­ve­ments and cer­ti­fi­ca­tes on your CV it doesn’t count as it should, and pay heed to my words: it should!

The press, the radio broa­d­ca­sting, the TV, that spe­ci­fic maga­zine should get the drift and we have to grow to get their attention.

Expan­sion, colo­nia­lism and travelling:

What doesn’t grow, sta­les and shrinks. No other way. It means that fresh air is wan­ted all the time, new mem­bers mean new ideas, new con­fron­ta­tions, new blood. Our mem­ber­ship tide goes up and down but never floods.

One club could split in two more clubs and one mem­ber can open a club any­where if pro­vi­ded with energy and enthu­siasm; who will pick up the chal­lenge of growth?

So far we did and lear­ned. We lear­ned by doing.

We’ll keep on lear­ning by doing what we haven’t done yet.

I prompt you all to define your goals for next year and match them with the vision of our club.

If you are new to the club there is so much you can achieve, it’s beyond your ima­gi­na­tion, and if you are senior to the club there is so much you can con­tri­bute, it’s all in your imagination.

Join and enjoy!

Ivan Ottaviani/ACG

The Pre­si­dent