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!

Update:
See more photos from the Anniversary below

Lemberg Toastmasters! We rock! We have 2nd place winner among the best Toastmaster speakers in Ukraine!

Time flies, seems like only a month ago we had our Local Speech Contest held in our club in winter.
We had two winners, Lena Koronenko and Alex Sheremet! According to the rules local winners went to Fifth Annual All Ukrainian Speech Contest to take part, and we won 2nd place! Within 14 participants, our Lena Koronenko won as a second best Toastmaster speaker in Ukraine!

Our warmest congratulations to Lena who brought such an honor to Lemberg Toastmasters club as a 2nd place winner in All Ukrainian Speech Contest. That means that Lemberg Toastmasters have a real potential, and we are proud of having such a professional member in our club.

The Fifth Annual All Ukrainian Speech Contest was organized by Toastmasters clubs in Ukraine and took place in the premises of Master-Klass Cultural Centre in Kyiv on April 25th, 2010. More than 120 people have attended the event and witnessed 14 articulate and very creative speeches delivered by representatives of 7 Toastmasters Clubs.

The winners of the contest were:

First place – Evgenia Poluektova, American Chamber of Commerce Toastmasters Club, Kyiv
Second place – Olena Koronenko, Lemberg Toastmasters Club, Lviv
Third place – Tatiana Lukinyuk, American Chamber of Commerce Toastmasters Club, Kyiv



On the picture: (from left to right)Olena Koronenko, Evgenia Poluektova, Tatiana Lukinyuk.

There were 3 people from our club who took part in the contest:
Lena Koronenko (contestant), Alex Sheremet(contestant) and Yaroslav Kisylychka (judge). I (Olena Derzhko) was lucky to talk to each of them and to get their impressions after visiting such event.

OD: Lena, what did you like the most in the contest?
OK: It is a great opportunity for each speaker to try him/herself in doing your best when competing to be the best public speaker. Such opportunity is of course challenging, but gives you lots of feedbacks: those are learning what it takes to be the winner, practice it and just a pleasure when you perform on a stage when the audience counts more than 100 people, and those are not your friends or relatives. It is all much more serious.

OD: Lena, were you scared to perform? Events of such importance do not happen so often?
OK: No, I wasn’t scared. The main thing, I was prepared and when you are prepared, you have nothing to be scared of.

OD: What are the benefits of participating in such contests for a Toastmaster club member?
OK: It is beneficial for any Toastmaster because you get a chance to speak in front of a large audience, from a big stage, which is it is another experience comparing to speaking in front of your well-known audience of your local members. Plus, you gain completely new skills when you speak among the best speakers, and get to be evaluated by unbiased jury with a really objective opinion about you. And also it is a great chance to meet different Toastmasters, to extend your networking. I consider All Ukrainian Speech Contest as a very great entertaining, even if you don’t go as a speaker-participant.



On the picture: Alex Sheremet delivering his speech

OD: Alex, what are the advantages of taking part in such events like Annual All Ukrainian Speech Contest?

A.Sh.:First of all, there you will see the best prepared speeches, what they should look like. It means fresh ideas and approaches to communicate with people, not just theory, but the best practices. You see what works, and what does not. Also, you meet many new people, and making personal contacts is always good for business and hobby.

The Toastmasters community consists of active people, who are professionals in certain area. It is surprising, how quickly my contact list grows with people I know personally, who can help me in my projects, or suggest being a part of theirs.

And last, but not least, participating in a speech contest is an unmatched experience, it is always exciting, it is a good benchmark of what you really can as an author and speaker.



On the picture: Yaroslav Kisylychka, judge at the contest)

OD: Yaroslav, you participated in Annual All Ukrainian Speech Contest as a judge. Tell us your impressions, what did you like about your role?
Y.K. As a judge I liked to evaluate every separate speaker according to 5 important skills, that a good speaker should have. It is not that hard to evaluate speaker objectively, still it requires some experience of evaluator, and exactly the first 6 speeches allow you to gain the mentioned experience and all the rest is just to polish the things you have learned.

Table Topics Contest

I love Table Topics! Love participating in them, love conducting them, love evaluating them, and just plain watching them. Because a Table Topic session is always a show, it's the most exciting and dynamic part of every meeting where everyone has the opportunity to think and speak on their feet.

And of course the key to a successful Table Topics session are the witty, intriguing and entertaining questions and comments of the person leading the session – the Table Topic Master. Every meeting we reward the best impromptu speaker; there are all sorts of speech contests, but the Topicsmaster always remains the man behind the scene.


That's why last week we held our very first Table Topics Contest. This was a great opportunity for the members to achieve recognition for their creativity, presentation and organizational skills and to exchange experience and some exciting new ideas for Table Topics.

The results exceeded all expectations. All Table Topics were unique and riveting.
First, Yaroslav took us on a journey in time, to the far past, to bring civilization to primitive tribes. We were to explain to the prehistoric people how to use some of the everyday appliances we have in our time.


It's amazing how we take most of the things we have for granted, so when it comes to explaining them, we don't know where to begin. Especially if the questions are a bit... unexpected :)


The next Topicsmaster, Olena has provided us some food for thought with her Table Topics devoted to emotions, good and bad. With her Table Topics session she showed that everything is not black or white and even anger can sometimes be useful.


Alex's Table Topic session was rather unusual. It transported us to a courtroom where we took part in a civil case process between a dog owner who was walking his dog without a leash and a man, whom the dog allegedly bit. Despite the gravity of the matter, the whole trial was hilarious, thanks to the colorful and vivid acting of the participants.

The next Topicsmaster, Reno, had some deeply philosophical questions. He drew parallels between human behavior and the survival mechanisms of orchids. Apparently no matter how evolved we may be, we still adhere to the same rules as the rest of the animal kingdom.


The last participant was Andriy, who also made us travel in time, this time into our own childhood. It was very interesting to hear about the childhood memories people have. And some of the stories were really amusing. Like, you know that cats always land on their feet, and a sandwich always falls butter down. But do you know what happens if you put butter on a cat's back and throw it out the window? It lands on a tree. Go figure... :)

At the end of the meeting 3 winners were determined.


The best impromptu speaker chosen by the majority of votes was Christina, our new member, who won the audience over with a hilarious story from her childhood.
The best Table Topics Master was Yaroslav and the audience choice award went to Andriy.

Overall, the contest turned out to be a success. It was a lot of fun and very educational. I think we'll make such contests a tradition along with the annual speech contests.

Splendid meeting

We had a really good meeting lately, so I want to share with you what I liked most. Maybe, it will give you an idea for your role preparation next time.

First, a grammarian’s word of the day: «to take one’s goat». Usually, the most used words are synonyms to «good»: they are easiest to insert into prepared speech, or to use in some meaningless sentences to fill gaps between speakers. Words with more complex meaning or concerning a particular subject barely make their way to speeches of one or two speakers. This time it was a completely different story. Perfectly announced by grammarian, and promoted by toastmaster, it was used several times by each member!

Then, there was a viewpoint. Rules are following: speaker has 2 minutes to deliver a very controversial speech, a statement that causes a holy war. Each response is 1 minute long. I decided to discuss attitude to police. The statement was that nobody likes them, for good reasons, but still apply for help. We should appreciate their service and collaborate when we can. Certainly, everyone has their own experience with police, and different attitude, so there was a certain flame. Just as planned!

As a tabletopic master, Lena arranged a «job interview in a company of your dream». «Interviewees» needed to answer one question each:

• What are your greatest weaknesses?


• Tell us about the latest problem you encountered. How did you solve it?


• What recent accomplishment are you most proud of?


• How would your colleagues describe you?


• What was the latest mistake you made? What did you learn from it?

It was a constant flow of interesting stories, personal experience, brilliant solutions. I liked the section very much.