Toastmasters Italia

Con­tri­buti

Dr Mar­tin Luther King once said, “I have a dream”. Well, so do I. In my dream, I envi­sion our club sprou­ting into seve­ral more clubs to create an area with 4 or 5 clubs. I see this deve­lo­ping into a district with seve­ral areas. I pic­ture speech com­pe­ti­tions bet­ween clubs and areas that evolve top-rate spea­kers who can com­pete at the Inter­na­tio­nal level. I fore­see an oppor­tu­nity for Ita­lian speech enthu­siasts to stand before large and varied groups of like-minded toast­ma­sters in many dif­fe­rent venues around Italy wil­ling to listen with a kind ear, eva­luate with an astute mind and encou­rage with a gene­rous heart. But alas, I thought this was only a dream… until Satur­day April 17th, when I got a peek at our pos­si­ble future and now… I am inspi­red.
Laura Tavola, Laura Limi­tone and I got up with the roo­sters that fate­ful Satur­day mor­ning and embar­ked on, what became for us, a tho­rou­ghly sati­sfy­ing and moti­va­ting jour­ney. We atten­ded the Divi­sion E Annual Con­fe­rence held in the Four Points by She­ra­ton in Zurich, Swi­tzer­land. This fla­w­les­sly orga­ni­zed event (what else would you expect from the Swiss) wel­co­med mem­bers from clubs from all over Swi­tzer­land to come toge­ther and learn from each other through work­shops and speech com­pe­ti­tions.
I was astoun­ded by the sheer num­ber of par­ti­ci­pants and encou­ra­ged by the enthu­siasm, pas­sion and keen­ness these Toast­ma­sters displayed. When we arri­ved, we where warmly wel­co­med, brie­fed on the days acti­vi­ties and given our name tags. One by one, almost all in atten­dance approa­ched us with a friendly smile, intro­du­ced them­sel­ves and expres­sed their appre­cia­tion that we would tra­vel so far to be a part of their con­fe­rence. I imme­dia­tely felt at ease… wel­come… home.
We wit­nes­sed top rate spea­kers give phe­no­me­nal spee­ches with text­book tech­ni­que clearly honed through hours of prac­tice. But, what really struck me was the joy that oozed from these spea­kers as they shared their thoughts through words and com­ple­tely enga­ged the audience. We heard about the impor­tance of allo­wing trust to win over fear, using anger as an ally, a new, posi­tive way of loo­king at the word “Mafia”, how soup made a pro­found dif­fe­rence in someone’s life and the power of words, the­mes of some really great spee­ches that I hope we can share with all of you in an upco­ming mee­ting once we receive the DVD.
After the speech com­pe­ti­tion, we had the oppor­tu­nity to wit­ness an equally arti­cu­late group jud­ged on their skills in eva­lua­ting a speech. All con­te­stants really sho­wed how power­ful an eva­lua­tion can be to encou­rage, give con­fi­dence, and empo­wer a spea­ker to move for­ward and improve.
Fol­lo­wing a short lunch and social net­wor­king, we all set­tled into the after­noon work­shops. I atten­ded the work­shop by Jack Vin­cent about “Sel­ling in a Brave new World” and AK Bul­lus on what to do when props go wrong in your pre­sen­ta­tions. Jack sho­wed us how much more wor­th­while it is to truly listen to our clients and not just show them how “sexy” our product/service can be and AK invol­ved us all in coming up with solu­tions to real disa­sters that occur with props when we do a pre­sen­ta­tion. Both were very inte­re­sting, invol­ved the audience and left me with many new ideas to think about.
We left the con­fe­rence regret­ting only one thing… that we didn’t sign up for the din­ner and perhaps stay the night so that we could have more time with these won­der­ful peo­ple. I made many new friends and esta­bli­shed some great con­tacts for poten­tial future busi­ness col­la­bo­ra­tion. We drove home exu­ding an after-glow of sati­sfac­tion after having a taste of what it means to be a part of such a large, well orga­ni­zed, enthu­sia­stic, and pas­sio­nate group.
As I come back to our club, I feel much more like a part of a much lar­ger orga­nism and am deter­mi­ned to use the tools Toast­ma­sters Inter­na­tio­nal gives us to grow toge­ther with all of you, the Ita­lian Toast­ma­sters: a group that has already pro­ven to be great and that, I am con­vin­ced, has the poten­tial to take its place in the Inter­na­tio­nal arena to pro­duce world-class spea­kers.
I highly encou­rage all of you to par­ti­ci­pate in the upco­ming Fall con­fe­rence (date to-be-announced). I know I’ll be there and am happy to have any and all of you join me. I pro­mise you, you won’t come back the same.

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.

Pro­se­gui la lettura…