On March 4th we held our Club speech and evaluation contests. The meeting had been efficiently prepared by Raquel, who also acted as Contest Chairwoman. A number of club members volunteered in the supporting roles. The meeting run smoothly, in the same friendly atmosphere as always.

Both contests reflected the high level of the club members. At the speech contest, we enjoyed the pitches delivered by Eric, Jane and Teresa, who was brave enough to enter also the evaluation contest, this one together with Luciana and Jaime. Each of the speakers managed to enthrall the audience, each one with a very different topic and style. Not an easy job for the judges, who declared Eric the winner of the contest, followed by Jane. The variety of the chosen topics, the differences in the presentation techniques and the feelings that all speeches aroused on us reflect the high level of our club members.

Our International Speech Contest results: 1. Eric David 2. Jane Kinnear 3. Teresa Ortega http://t.co/C1KWs0NgHH

— Toastmasters Madrid (@TM_Madrid) March 5, 2015

Despite the careful organisation of the meeting, the planned test speaker for the evaluation contest did not show up and Nacho volunteered to replace him. His was a truly impromptu speech, focused on informing about the Division Conference to be held the last weekend in April, where Toastmasters from all clubs in Spain will meet in Madrid to compete in these same categories at national level. There will also be workshops to develop our leadership and public speaking skills, as well as networking activities.

Our Evaluation Contest results: 1. @jaimeirastorza 2. @luciriestra 3. Teresa Ortega http://t.co/4oZow1M9JA — Toastmasters Madrid (@TM_Madrid) March 5, 2015

Teresa, Luciana and Jaime showed their command of evaluations by giving very comprehensive, structured and productive syntheses of the test speech. They highlighted both the most remarkable aspects of the speech, and those few issues that could have been improved, indicating explicitly how that could have been done. Another tall order for the judges, who declared Jaime winner, with Luciana ranking in second place.

Seems that I gave good feedback to our target speaker @ign_arenas in our Contest @TM_Madrid 🙂 #SpainSpeaks2015 pic.twitter.com/EtJyP19NYT

— Jaime Irastorza (@jaimeirastorza) March 4, 2015

We all had great fun and learned a lot by listening to the contestants, both in the speech and in the evaluation contests. The next step for the winners (who are now part of the club’s Hall of Fame) will be the Area Contest on 11th April, where they will compete against the other Madrid clubs’ winners for a seat in the Division Contest.

Written by Alberto.