Stockholm International Toastmasters

… to those of you who participated in starting up ReadSoft Toastmasters in Kista. Some of you have been valued advisors, and others have attended the meetings in Kista and taken various roles. Members from both our own club and from Stockholm Toastmasters have presented speeches at the Kista meetings and provided new members with a sampling of the more advanced speeches. Super!

Now the ball is rolling and ReadSoft Toastmasters is on its way to becoming an active participant in the greater Toastmasters community. With more clubs in the the greater Stockholm area and in Sweden, we all benefit. Thanks again – and you are still very welcome at upcoming meetings in Kista!

Congratulations to all of our members who competed in our club’s International Speech Contest and Evaluation Contest on March 7! Good job everyone!

And special congratulations to the winners:

1st place in the International Speech Contest: Joli Riley
2nd place in the International Speech Contest: Lyndelle Palmer-Clarke

1st place in the Evaluation Contest: On-Yee Fung
2nd place in the Evaluation Contest: Joli Riley

Amazing job! The first-place winners will represent our club in at the upcoming Division Conference and then (hopefully) at the District 59 conference (Continental Europe).

Speech contests are a great way to challenge yourself and practice your skills. SITM’s spring speech contests will be held on the evening of March 7:

• The International Speech Contest. At this contest, each contestant presents an original 5– to 7–minute speech on the subject of their choice (similar to a Competent Communication manual speech).

  To be eligible, you must be a member and you must have completed at least six speeches from the Competent Communication manual prior to the club contest.

  The International Speech Contest is judged according to this ballot.

• The Evaluation Contest. For this contest, everyone listens to an example speech. Then each contest participant performs an evaluation of that speech. None of the contestants are in the room when the others are presenting their evaluation.

  To be eligible, you must be a member of SITM.

  The Evaluation Contest is judged according to this ballot.

The winner of each contest will advance to the area contest. The area contest winner advances to the Division 59 contest. The division winner advances to the district contest…. Onward and upward!

You can enter both contests, or take a role at the meeting, participate in the judging, or simply attend the meeting and be part of the excitement.

If you are interested in serving as contest chair (counts as credit for project 8 in your Advanced Leadership manual), please let us know ASAP. (But don’t fret if you can’t; members may also help out in the Area Conference/Contest in late March.)

More information about contests is available here.

To attend the contest or take a role at the meeting, sign up as usual on EasySpeak, or email vpe@sitm.se.

As your Vice President Education I find it very exciting to see our club grow and to have so many active members. Naturally this has not been without its drawbacks: Some of us have experienced a bottleneck when we’ve wanted to schedule prepared speeches, with many weeks’ wait.

I’ve scheduled many extra meetings in order to accommodate the demand, and now there are so many scheduled that we have meetings on our calendar every Wednesday until the summer break (and thereafter as needed).

This is a really great development! It means that you are more likely to get a speech date soon after you request one. It means that if you miss a Toastmasters meeting, you won’t have to go four weeks between meetings. It means that we can accommodate even more members. We all benefit from membership in a larger Toastmasters club, with many members who can provide feedback, demonstrate different speaking styles, and develop their speaking and leadership skills.

Check out our calendar on EasySpeak, and sign up for roles at upcoming meetings. And as always, request speeches by clicking Request a Speech in the left menu on EasySpeak — or by emailing me at vpe@sitm.se.

See you at an upcoming meeting!

Autumn means Humorous speech contests. The club can’t be risk being beaten by those funny speakers from Gothenburg, so we will arrange a Humor Workshop to fight their wordplay jokes!

Update: The workshop has been postponed a few weeks. New date will be announced here later