Dear Mercury Members,
Our club is like a drug. It’s so good, it’s addictive. The atmosphere at our meetings is uplifting and the number of members and guests that continue to come to us shows this.
From left to right: Lena, Jeremy, Dyane, Diana, Robert, Renko, Wendy, Mariana (in the front)
But THIS wouldn’t be possible without the BOARD. Mariana, Robert, Matthias, Jeremy, Lena, Wendy and Dyane did a tremendous job. They built a community that supports and encourages our members to look forward to coming to our meetings on Wednesdays. It was a real pleasure to be part of THIS board and learn from each of the officers.
Since July we have gained 31 new members and two membership awards: Smedley and Talk Up Toastmasters! We have a strong Meetup platform and website – two projects started by the previous board. We have our slogan as a result of a contest run by Dyane. The winner was Brent, with the slogan “We Have Ways to Make You Talk“.
The club’s financial situation is very healthy. It’s important to mention that Mercury has bought a new camera and also supported Violetta (with 100€ raised by the previous Board) when she represented us in the District Contest in Boras, Sweden.
Special events were wonderfully organized almost every month by our VP Education Wendy, who along with Dyane, Renko, Jeremy, and Johanna, created an Art Evening, Poetry Slam, Evaluation Workshop, Storytelling and Speak-A-Thons. Wonderful!
Tolga, our VP PR for the first 4 months, created a wonderful video with the best moments at Mercury. And Lena, as current VP PR, has created a history of Mercury which you can check out on gitbook.com.
Brent and Khushi made Mercury a name in the world by writing articles for Toastmasters Magazine! Brent wrote on Speech Structure and on How to Become a Speechwriter and Khushi wrote about the 90th Anniversary.
Khushi and Anna were our Learning Masters. They invested their time, their energy and their talent in Toastmaster International’s Revitalized Education Program.
We sponsored two big events this year: the Toastmasters 90th Anniversary organized by Khushi and the Mercury 15th Anniversary organized by Lena. Khushi and Jeremy won the Video Brand Contest in October with their great Thank you Toastmasters video and Khushi also won first place in District 95’s 90th Year Celebration Contest.
Khushi helped the club in the background too, by acting as grammarian for our website.
For both the fall and spring Speech Contests, we had competitors who made it all the way to the Division level: Renko and Robert in the fall, Violetta and Friederike in spring. Violetta went even further and shared her miracles with the entire District. You can read about her experience in Boras here. Not to forget our contest masters: Anna in the Fall Area Contest and Johanna and Renko in the Spring Division Contest, and our target speaker, Sunder, at the Spring Area Contest. Johanna and Wendy went all the way to the District Conference in Boras to be Contest Chairs in the International and Evaluation Contests.
We achieved 9 DCP points out of 10, thus we can keep the status of President Distinguished Club.
A lot of things have happened this year, haven’t they? This is Mercury I know and this makes us unique.
Mariana, Robert, Matthias, Jeremy, Lena, Wendy, Dyane, Khushi, Brent, Anna, Violetta, Friederike, Johanna, Sunder, I would like to thank you for YOUR dedication, YOUR commitment, YOUR time, YOUR creativity, YOUR enthusiasm, YOUR talent.
Winston Churchill said “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.” and our members succeeded in making a life.
Sundial
Toastmasters is a huge organization. Each and every one of you have a talent to share, be it in communication as Wendy, in body language as Dyane, in writing as Brent, in creativity as Jeremy, in organisation as Khushi. What is your talent? Share it with us!
I do love this organisation because it gives each of you the possibility to experiment and expand in your area of expertise. Benjamin Franklin said “Hide not your talents, they for use were made, What’s a sundial in the shade?”
With joy and gratitude,
Mercury President 2014-2015
