Let me cry for a while! Cause I have just lost every my single offline note of the special event. What a junior silly Jianshu guy! I have to dig every single piece from my poor memory, with the help of agenda, lots of lovely pictures, countless memory fragments, and my heart...
Nobody could have easily imagined this Big Day today, the 900th meeting and 20th anniversary of a Toastmaster club! However, it is Pudong Toastmaster club, the 2nd earliest club in Shanghai, and the 3rd one in mainland China, made it. Luckily,I was a member of this legendary club during Dec 2011~ Dec 2016.
With professionalism built into her blood, all the guests, alumni, speakers, members were warmly welcomed by the organizing committee, at reception desk, lined-up behind the door, and everywhere in the newly opened venue. Everyone was sticked a blue event sticker with Pudong club symbol picture of Lujiazui. The event was kicked off in a typical weekly meeting way, with current President Albert addressing all attendees including distinguished speakers and guests.
Three professional dressed-up MCs came on the stage invited by the president, who led a toast for 20th anniversary, the tradition of the club. The audience soon were shocked by the greeting video, dubbing a famous film. The innovative trick was approved to be very effective to warm up the room with obviously increased energy level. District Director Ronaldo delivered a speech by walking through his Toastmaster tenure over the past years. As the No.1 of District 85, he did not need to prepare too much for such content, since he might have already delivered similar stuff to many clubs for too many times. Poor Ronald, you previously was very creative. After that, the long wait hero, club founding president, Randal stepped on the stage, told us the interesting founding history of Pudong club. He originally was aimed to grow his connection for job hunting during his non working time accompanying his wife in Shanghai. He actually started to know Toastmaster back to 1995, and joined as a member 2 years after. Before coming to China, he and his wife actually had established several clubs in US and Canada. Now again, he is leaving China, and heading to his hometown, Russia. What an interesting figure! Toastmaster is non-profit organization and he has been doing Toastmaster for close to a quarter of century, with no expecting stop time. There are now four clubs in Russian. Will he plant club seeds of another bloom batch of 200+ clubs within two decades? I believe so! Hope everyone of us is lucky enough to fly to Russia witnessing another great club’s 20th anniversary. Great person! Good luck!
Like the MC mentioned, 70% attendees were coming for Kwong Yue Yang, the veteran shortlist of Toastmasters International Speech Contest, who made several times to the 2nd place of the final BIG Highest dream stage. As expected, Kwong gave us an effective workshop of how to make a story speech. He started by asking us to do a self-video of saying “Hello” and ask for the buddy to give feedback, in order to remind us to be a true “yourself” confidently and sincerely. Kwong instructed us to use mind spans way to quickly and unconsciously list intuitive key words in a minute from an initial word. Then we circled the word to be explored further as the topic of speech story. Remember, unconsciously! I picked the word , “Choice” ! We then need start the speech interesting and attract the audience immediately in one or two sentence, then pause. An unusual whisper might interest people unexpectedly. With that, we need find material of own story. But how? Kwong suggested us to think of challenge around the picked word, the problem facing us which could lead to a bad result or a damage if it were not well addressed. Link with own story. It is fine to “borrow” other’s story if you are “boring” person, while remeber to be sincere without faking. After finding challenge, conflict and climax should be dived into. No conflict, No story. At last, draw some conclusion the value or key message to be delivered to the audience. We were instructed to test ourselves by delivering a 1 minute speech. People were so engaged to doing that by facing a wall, a dustbin, and myself facing the “Dice” statue. Most people finished 50% of the short speech in 1 minute. Kwong then gave us another chance to cut unnecessary sentences to reach 100%. I made it, and I guess most people finished. That’s an interesting way, a bit like table topic impromptu speech. During the Q&A, he was “challenged” by an audience to deliver a 1-minute story. After thought about 5 seconds, he then started. I can not remember his wording exactly, but just let me rephrase in my way. "I stepped into New York subway, the 1st time I was in New York and New York subway. A black man stood there and kept looking at me from time to time. I was so frightened and thought he might want to beat me...... The black man came closer and closer to me, with something in hand. What’s that? Is it a knife or gun? Is he going to kill me? ... Suddenly the train door was opened. The black man handed me a piece of paper before he got off the train and disappeared. I opened the paper, it was a portrait of ME! He was drawing a picture of me and kept looking at my face from time to time. What a silly thinking I had! Not everything is as what we see and think." So amazing! A master gave us a master level workshop!
During the break time, people were busy with the refreshments and chatting. I found myself lost since I had been disappearing for several years, only could recognize and chat with a few faces. Or maybe the original built “chicken blood” has vanished almost. The good thing was I soon were asked to come on the stage and join alumni group to celebrate the moment and take group photo. The only moment I found myself proud of being one part of the club, while looking at those still seated off the stage. I resisted my temptation to remind the lady MC to lead us singing “Happy Birthday”, the must-not-missed emotional moment of any birthday or anniversary. Everyone should be respected to go along with a learning curve or pace, his or her own. The club has already reached such a magnificent milestone with such a splendidly grand event. That has already approved itself as a tremendous success. I was just a past VPE, a super humble one!
The second half part were featured firstly with a leadership panel discussion. Six panelist varied in seniority in Toastmaster, the 1st club VPE , District club grow director, etc. The pattern pull me back to the 600th meeting, which I was also involved. The term “leadership” , just like “Toastmaster”, has too many different interpretation. It actually tastes differently in different personal Toastmaster phase. Some viewpoints were in common sense and well accepted. A panelist were proud by establishing clubs and giving back to the community. Another panelist reminded we should apply toastmaster skills to work and life. Some viewpoints were obviously in club level, or slightly in personal mindset/focus/aspiration though already in a very senior role. A panelist mentioned leadership is communications or confidence. My interpretation of leadership also is pretty differently from them, which is highly linked with the content of High Performance Leadership manual. Toastmaster, Where Leaders are Made! Leadership is NOT just about speech, communication, or professionalism, but about every single aspect of a human being, speaking, listening, mentoring, giving feedback, planning, building team, setting goal, executing, escalating, whatever, etc. It must not be set with any boundary at any level, individual, club, area, district, viewpoint, taste, or whatever. Junior toastmaster can ignore for now, while senior toastmasters will need to bear this in mind, unless he/she is satisfied with staying at club level. The good thing was, all panelists looked enjoying themselves pretty much in Toastmaster, that’s top important.
The succeed Table topics speech contest session marked it as a very popular one. Around 8 contestants joined, some were table topic veteran in Toastmaster community. The topic was "What will you do to make the world a better place". The singing Polly was very attractive, even dancing on the stage. I don’t think it was my fault for having been distracted from what she was saying “ Love yourself, trust yourself more”. Steven, even pre-prepared the content of “Once you change, the world around you will change” and adapted to the topic on the stage, which was a smart way. However he was also putting himself at the risk of delivering a same bowl of "Chicken soup" each time. Lan bin might have conquered most audiences with his point “Make myself a little better and Get prepared”,as well as his humorous twist and linkage with his wife and family. David did also good generally with his point of "smiling to everyone. It is free and easy and can make the world a better place.” ,though a bit rushing to the conclusion less strongly. Myself enjoyed the table topic contest session a lot.
The following prepared speech session were consisted of a junior speech and a senior speech. Trista told us her challenge of reaching work-life balance with great braveness before the huge audience, receiving a big applause of encouragement from the audience when she had trouble in concluding her speech. Frank, a Dinosaur Toastmaster and my club mentor, told us his Toastmasters journey from the time he joined Toastmasters back to 1990's, till now 9 years with Pudong Toastmasters. He demonstrated his proudness with his trophies and pictures of best memory. Though I had already heard him delivering the same content several times, quite some present audiences were showing expected astonishment on his journey.
Surprisedly, a guitar player appeared on the stage and played two melodies, one might be composed by himself, another was familiar to us. It blended some love and romance elements into the major overwhelming professionalism theme. That was very nice.
It was such a magnificent anniversary event with great success. Thanks to the event organizing committee, who demonstrated so well the club symbol of "Professionalism". It was a great honor to come back in formal dress witnessing the very moment, memorable moment, of the beloved club. Thank you Pudong Toastmaster club, for giving me the platform to start my toastmaster journey. Thank you Pudong Toastmaster club for helping me cultivate precious skills of communication and leadership. Thank you Pudong Toastmaster club for baking my mindset of being open and enjoying the life! 920, Just Loving You, Pudong Toastmasters club! Happy 20th Anniversary!
—stoppage line—