Lemberg Toastmasters 5-th Anniversary Party Report

Lemberg Toastmasters 5-th Anniversary Party Report

by Yustyna Holubets

Dear Toastmasters!

I am very happy to report that on February 8th the anniversary of Lemberg Toastmasters took place!
Luxurious place, delicate dishes and lovely music perfectly amplified our energy for various exciting activities.

There were two Holiday Table Topics during which volunteer speakers shared their wishes and painted by words different positive emotions. The winners, Lyuba Lazarenko and Alex Bair, got sweet presents.

Also during games guessing child photos and secrets we had an opportunity to discover some less known facts of our club members’ life and also find out how they looked long before becoming toastmasters. World music and quotations guessing games added an exciting intriguing spirit.

And true zest of the evening became “The Talent Show”. During the evening we mentioned outstanding abilities of our members:

• Mykola Makhin who made a statistics of members’ progress with diagrams and tables.
• Alex Bair who is keen on doing amazing sites about cinema.
• Alex Sheremet who is good at handmade art doing original and practical things.
• Andriy Turak who has a definite talent in drama playing.
• Also we enjoyed the performances and demonstrations of the following talents.
• Lyuba Lazarenko presented a splendid singing number taking us to “Marilyn Monroe” world.

• Igor Klyuka revealed his deep interest in Asian cultures showing us his origami skills.
• Olena Derzko provided a desert for the party having cooked her wonderful eclers. 
• Oles Semenyuk made us burst from laugh by presenting his humorous stories.

• Yustyna Holubets introduced a mysterious Orient with her Indian and Arabic dances.

I would like to thank every participant for coming, for your holiday mood and active participation!
Special thanks to:

• Victor Medvedyev for organization and support of the event.
• Lyuba Lazarenko for arranging the place and menu.
• Mykola Makhin for technical support and for being a prefect DJ.
• Alex Sheremet for managing contest prizes.
• Sviatoslav Zalizschuk for sharing his notebook.
• Olenka Derzko for bringing perfect dance music.
• Kostya Pylypchuk for being our “Fashion Hunter”.
• Andriy Turak, our devoted President, who did come to celebration in spite of breaking his leg.

And all others who did send the photos and secrets!

...to help you break the ice - a prize for delivering an Ice Breaker

"Come to the dark side!.. We have cookies :-)"

// reportedly a motivational phrase by Darth Vader

The Ice Breaker is what a first speech of a Toastmasters Club member is called. As someone once said, a journey of thousand miles begins with a step, and in Toastmasters Club this step is an Ice Breaker speech. And as it is the first - it is the hardest one.

Our conscious mind and logic tell us that since one becomes a member of a Toastmasters Club he should waste no time and start delivering the speeches, but our subconscious mind often has different opinion. Knowing that we're about to go on a many miles journey we will most certainly hesitate to make a first step, even though it seems to be an easy step to do on it's own. Similar things happen to new members as they are about to deliver their Ice Breakers - there's always some fear or uncertainty in our subconsciousness that causes procrastination and evasion, while our conscious mind just makes up excuses like "I think I'm not prepared enough yet" etc. Life is full of situations like this, I believe everyone at certain times in their lives have to struggle with themselves to overcome this kind of "invisible barrier".

But, as often mentioned, Toastmasters Club is a positive and mutually supportive environment. And now as a part of this support we are introducing a new thing that should really help you on getting extra motivation for delivering an Ice Breaker and getting your subconsciousness to become eager to deliver it - a prize! A prize for delivering an Ice Breaker.

The prize itself isn't something extra fancy, yet we believe it is just the right thing to have an effect on your subconscious mind - this nice cup with Toastmasters International logo:

click to see bigger picture

Looks good, doesn't it? Want one? Than stop hesitating and deliver that Ice Breaker! :-)

New Officers Team

Lemberg TM club has appointed a new team of officers for 2011-2012.

Please welcome:

Andriy Turak - President

Alex Sheremet - VP Education

Yustyna Holubets - VP Membership

Pavlo Maschak - VP PR

Secretary - Mykola Makhin

Treasurer - Dmytro Martynov

I personally wish these guys the best of the experience on the leadership position at the club, and truly devoted members and great achievements!

Viewpoint

You have probably noticed a strange phenomenon: sometimes a discussion can be hot and last hours, but other times barely a handful of sentences are dropped — and the talk is over, as nobody replies, let alone argues. Some blog posts collect thousands of links and comments, while other products of the same author can remain uncommented.

The skill to support the hot flame of discussion can be developed, this is why we make a Viewpoint section an essential part of our club meetings.

To cut a long story short, here are the basic rules. A speaker has 2 minutes to deliver a controversial viewpoint. His speech is aimed at splitting the audience in halves: supporters and opponents, and starting a hot dispute between them. Responders have 1 minute each to reply.

It is very important to clearly understand your stand point, and deliver it straight, with no disclaimers. There can only be black or white, and no shade. Do not try to analyse pros and cons of each side.

When you prepare a viewpoint speech, remember what causes the biggest urge to reply. I bet, nobody wants to answer a trivial question. But I want to stand up and speak up when someone is wrong. So, it is important to deliver a strong statement rather than a question.

Reading this, you may think: "Blimey, you are talking about Internet trolls!" — Right, I am! They know, how to make you boil, and extract tons of comments out of readers. Their methods are a good lesson for shy speakers, who protect each opinion with disclaimers.

So, here are my three major tips for a viewpoint speaker:

• Pick a title that draws attention. It needs to catch their eye sights, and rise their eye brows a bit.
• Deliver an intentionally limited, one-sided view point, which leaves no room for different mindset. Make their heart beat stronger.
• Make a very controversial statement as a conclusion. Let the blood hammer in their temples!

Now you are ready to go. Let them release the steam. Let the debates begin!

Hot Rhythms of Summer Holidays

Summer in winter! Can it be possible? Definitely yes! At Toastmasters Summer carnival which took place in Kiev, on 22nd of January 2011!
The atmosphere of the beach, sea, sand and hot burning sun captured you as soon as you stepped inside the room. All the guests got a warm welcome on reception where they were provided with the sunhats to protect the heads from the sunstroke, with small bottles to blow soap bubbles and sugar candies to feel that cool sweet holiday carelessness.


You felt as if you were at real beach: all around there were umbrellas, towels with dolphins, and a slide show of participants’ best holidays’ photos in the background. Girls in their best dresses were beautiful and bright as flowers, guys in colorful shorts, shirts and sunglasses looked like real playboys. Everyone excited, merry, relaxed and energetic.
As soon as the company was rather big the team game was a good start indeed. Divided in teams we were to create the best holiday story. After exciting and loud discussions and preparation we felt much more relaxed and close to each other, so funny it was. We could enjoy the witty, eccentric performances recreating a deserted island with an exotic tribe, an Egyptian hotel with dangerous sharks, and a beauty contest with an unusual end.


After some time of pleasant conversations, delicious food, Kiev Toastmasters presented some pretty and interesting numbers. There was a song written by one of the members who played it on a guitar, another girl sang a romantic nice hit from the 80-s, and a group of six officers from the Area team performed a really funny yet very challenging and concentration demanding project.
And of course, what is the summer without dancing? Our party contained a really hot dance part. To inspire the audience and to present them with an exotic wind of orient there was a performance of Bollywood-belly dance numbers (presented by me, Yustyna Holubets, which was a great pleasure and honor for me). This was followed by a fascinating and energizing master class of Latin dance from a true professional dancer Gabriel from Cuba. And then it went! There was no person who wouldn’t dance that evening. Hot and romantic, rhythmic and slow music gave us all a unique feeling of holidays and took us back to such desired sunny days.
Three members from our Lviv Lemberg Toastmasters Club were lucky to be present there. Victor Medvedev seemed to be one of the most popular playboys among the others.


Our president Lena Koronenko with her unique self-made wreath of fresh flowers and her witty jokes created a summer mood from the very beginning as the host of the event.
As for me, the carnival became an excellent time of holiday, inspiring, amazing, great time…

Yustyna Holubets

Table Topics Contest

Great news everyone! Last week we have conducted a Table Topics Contest. After the great response we got last year, we have decided to make this our annual tradition.

Each meeting is fun and interesting on its own, but from time to time we want even more emotions, a spirit of contest, communication with other clubs. That is what contests are for: to show what we can do, and to watch others in action! People from different clubs gathered in Lviv this time to compete for the titles of Best Table Topic Master, and Best Table Topic Speaker.

What are Table Topics anyway? Table topics are small impromptu speeches. They are just 2 minutes long, but need to have perfect structure, to be emotional and inspiring.


Table Topic masters announce the rules and general theme for talks. They conduct the show, talking on a subject to help speakers form their own story or a viewpoint, they also make transitions between speakers and their speeches.

This year we had four contestants who prepared their Table Topics sessions. Four judges, two from Lviv, and two from Kyiv, apprised the Best Table Topic Master based on fixed criteria and cold-minded analysis of strengths and flaws of each of four contestants. We paid much attention to fair metrics, so that a cheerful smile and contagious positiveness do not outperform thoughtful preparation and elaborate rehearsal. This is our second contest already (see the Table Topics contest 2009), nevertheless we still see the ways to improve our scale.

A fair democratic voting was our way to let the people’s hearts choose the best Speaker and the Chosen Table Topic Master. This way we made sure that no pure technical trick or weeks of thorough preparation would outperform the natural charm and enthusiasm!

Lyuba Lazarenko was first to present a topic of cartoons. The cartoon heroes we all know appeared in different situations on her pictures. Speakers were asked to describe the story behind the illustrations. All the stories were quite unexpected, and interesting :) And as one of the speakers, I must admit that they were challenging to compose. Only when one tries walking in Table Topic Speaker's shoes, can he understand how brilliant some stories and speakers truly are!

Christina Domashchuk asked the audience to come up with an alternative story based on well-known fairy tales. As in the childhood, the tales were entertaining and had a happy ending. But unlike hearing your grandmother tell the story again and again, knowing every next word, no one could ever guess what comes next! The listeners were roaring with laughter at very unexpected turns of the plots.

Yustyna Holubets was about to found a Total Happiness Organization, and conducted interviews with candidates to the head positions of departments of Confidence, Luck, Success and Creativity. Speakers presented their own ways to run the organization and help people according to their department’s competence. Very thought provoking, the topic has led to interesting ideas and thoughts that make us look at our ways of life from different angles.

And no discussion today can be conducted without trendy social networks! Yuriy Karabach lead the discussion, asked provoking questions, and even called 2 speakers at once to make a sketch on personal communication in an office while facing an impatient deadline. I am personally not a big fan of all the e-social stuff, but the discussion made me consider: maybe it’s worth a second try? It definitely sounded cool!

All the masters were hilarious and creative in their own way, and speakers were a good match to them!

Overall, the contest turned out to be a success. Ancient streets of old Lviv met the first snow, while in the SoftServe’s meeting room Toastmasters enjoyed the cozy atmosphere of friendly talks, stories, and presentations, the rage of a contest, and the joy of sweet victory.

Congratulations to Lyuba Lazarenko, she was chosen by the audience to be the Best Table Topic Speaker!

Congratulations to Christina Domashchuk, she received the Audience Choice Award!

Congratulations to Yustyna Holubets, she was chosen by the jury to be the Best Table Topic Master!

Congratulations to all participants and guests, we had a whole weekend of fun, and that was brilliant! :-)

Games Toastmasters Play

It’s a well-known fact that people come to Toastmasters to learn. It’s also a well-known fact that people come to Toastmasters to have fun :)

And what better way to combine business with pleasure than to practice your English and public speaking skills by playing games? That’s why occasionally we play games at the meetings. There are a lot of speaking games out there and we have tried many of them, until we found two favorite ones, which have the advantage of giving players a great opportunity to use their speaking skills, while being very thrilling and entertaining.

Hide a Word

To play this game, the audience is divided into two teams, and each player gets a piece of paper with a common, fairly everyday use word, which they don’t show to anyone.

Players from each team are then called to the stage in turn to give a one minute speech on a topic provided by the opposing team. The topic can be anything: the weather, fishing, astrology, etc. The key is to use your secret word during this one-minute speech at least once. When the minute is over, the opposing team gets three attempts to guess what the secret word was. If they guess the word, they get a point, and if they don’t guess, then the speaker’s team gets a point.

The trick is to forward your speech in the necessary direction or to slip the secret word into a sentence without going too far off topic; otherwise the opposing team will easily guess it. And here is where your Toastmasters practice comes in handy :)

Of course, the more specific or unusual the topic is, the more difficult it will be for the speaker to use the secret word without going off topic too much, so there has to be a moderator to make sure the topics aren’t completely bizarre.

We usually play a practice round with the game master being the speaker with the secret word and the players giving the topic and trying to guess the word, so that everyone understands the idea of the game.

This game is great for Toastmasters since it develops quick thinking, adept speaking and attentive listening.

Just 1 Minute

Another game we like to play is called “Just 1 minute” and is fairly popular among Toastmasters.

As with “Hide a Word” the audience is divided into two teams. The game master gives one of the teams a topic to speak on and starts the timer. A speaker from this team starts to speak on the given topic and continues until he is stopped by a player from the opposing team. Any player of the opposing team can stop the speaker if he makes any kind of mistake in his speech, like says “um”, takes a pause which is too long, makes a grammatical mistake, or goes off topic. The player who stops the speaker then proceeds to speak on this topic until he makes a mistake and is stopped by the opposing team. The teams continue until the minute runs out. Whoever is speaking at the end of the minute gets a point for their team.

This game is very competitive and thrilling and really keeps you on your toes. It teaches you to think ahead of speaking even when time is limited, producing an eloquent and seamless speech.

Other Games

We are always looking for new ideas to make our meetings even more diverse and interesting, so if you know other speaking games you would like to play at the meeting, don't hesitate and sign up for the Game master role!