19 Aug

10 years of Toastmasters at BASF

In September 2013 we began with Toastmasters meetings on BASF site in Ludwigshafen. With strong support of Mannheim International Toastmasters Club and many BASF colleagues “demo-meetings” were run and made the Toastmasters community in Ludwigshafen inside and outside of BASF growing. After establishing regular meetings and 9 months later we officially chartered. Since then BASF Toastmasters is one of more than 15,000 Toastmasters Clubs worldwide.

For a decade everyone can join us twice a month for prepared speeches, impromptu presentations and giving feedback. For a decade countless Ice Breakers have been presented, a tremendous amount of recognistions has been handed over and numerous members made their way with Toastmasters achieving the different levels in communication and leadership. Apart from that for a decade BASF Toastmasters has been involved in many activities of fun and learning.

With Spring into Action we’ve run special sessions in backwards mode or with debating that were creatively different from the well-known Toastmasters meetings. In the summertime club members left the meeting room behind and got together for BBQ, picnic or hamburgers. Experienced Toastmasters conducted workshops that brought us closer to interesting topics like “Characteristics of Effective Leaders“. The White Elephant Gift Exchange has become a much-loved tradition and must-have before Christmas. Being part of the Toastmasters Community our leaders became the Area Director of the region. The club also organised its own and the Area’s speech contests. Connecting with other Toastmasters of BASF our speakers presented at the Global Open House.

Continuing for another ten years we are looking forward to welcome you at one of the next meetings. Come along on March 25, 2024, 17:45 - 19:30, most certainly you’ll have as much fun as we had already in the past!

17 May

BASF-Toastmasters BBQ @Mannheim Luisenpark, 6th June 2022

Dear Toastmasters & Friends

After a long monotonous time without private Toastmasters events, we are very happy to invite you, your partner & family, friends and colleagues to our  “Summer Outdoor Event” at Mannheim’s Luisenpark on Monday 06th June 2022 at 17:45 hrs. We will meet at the BBQ area which is shown as No. 40 on the Luisenpark map. Please bring the culinary BBQ (meat, sausages, vegetarian grill food) for your own.  

We will send out a list for those who also want to bring a salad, bread, cakes etc. for the group. In a relaxed atmosphere with nice people and hopefully nice weather (1), we can practice our new skills: 

  • the Toastmaster will become the BBQ-Master; 
  • the word of the day will change to the drink of the day; 
  • instead of the ah-Counter we have a “who-spoke-with-full-mouth counter”; 
  • the general evaluator will give the feedback to the food, drinks, location etc. 
  • the “BASF Karaoke-Masters” will provide a good entertainment with KTV-Songs from ABBA to ZAPPA 

 Certainly we will have a most enjoyable evening — we do hope that you will have time to come along and have fun with us!!!  Please accept  Harald’s invitation by e-mail or use our contact form until Thursday, 19th May 2022.

The event will take place however bad the weather may be, let’s carry the sunshine in our hearts!  Nevertheless Luisenpark also offers some sheltered places. 

02 Dec

White Elephant Gift Exchange 2021

Dear Toastmasters and Guests,

You are cordially invited to join our Online Christmas special event, where we are going to unwrap our virtual Christmas gift and take a look into fellow members’ home offices. All of that will we in Toastmasters style which means you’ll have a lot of opportunity to train your public speaking skills.

For those wanting to join, we kindly ask you to send the following pictures to elephant@basf-toastmasters.com

  • your Christmas gift, e.g. a funny, strange, spectacular object you would like one of the participants to receive as a gift (and create a spontaneous speech related to that)
  • your personal home office, the place where you work in these times at home (this will be also shared during our session — “Which place belongs to Whom?”)

Once you’ve sent these pictures we will share the link for the online event with you! We look forward to having a wonderful and entertaining evening together with you.

Should you have any inquiries, please feel free to contact us. Our first meeting in 2022 will be on 10 January.

Yours sincerely,
Club Officers

24 Aug

Develop yourself with Toastmasters in 2021/2022 and extend your membership

Dear fellow Toastmasters

we will continue our regular meetings according to the current Covid situation online or offline. With John Deere Germany Toastmasters currently we plan a joint meeting of the two corporate clubs in Rhine-Neckar region. You can also count on special activities like our White Elephant Gift Exchange and a Toastmasters’ get together before Christmas.

Continue your individual journey with Pathways and enjoy full access to toastmasters.org with all its digital ressources. To do so just extend your membership at BASF Toastmasters for another 6 months! We kindly ask you to remit 6 x 8 EUR / month = 48 EUR (2021-10–2022-03) to our account! If needed we can issue an individual invoice for membership dues. We also would like to take the opportunity to say “thank you” to those of you who already paid for the new term in advance.

Please contact our President Lei or our Treasurer Martin if you have further questions.

09 Jul

Join Toastmasters’ Leadership Training for free!

The leadership training this summer hosted by the Division F in English is on July 31st from 12 pm – 5 pm CET / COT (Englisch). By attending the training, you will have the opportunity to develop real-world leadership skills, form support networks with your peers, and take away knowledge and ideas which can help you succeed in your role. Club leaders are strongly encouraged to attend the training in order to gain the most for yourself in terms of skills, ideas, and networking. Everyone else (members and non-members) may also attend this training in order to learn more about leadership, as well as any future role within Toastmastersa they are considering nominating for.

Please find the registration form here: https://forms.gle/mgoxzpfb7sNGsG9q7

07 Jun

Election of Club Officers 2021/2022

Dear BASF Toastmasters,

Many of you already know that we are going to elect our new officer team for the term 2021-2022 soon. Right now we are 10 in total. 7 of you are going to pick up an officer role to help our club grow and to achieve its goals. While some of you already informed us about his favorite officer role, we are looking forward to receiving the messages from the others for these seven roles listed below.

  • President: for the team building
  • VP Education: for planning and organizing the club meetings
  • VP Membership: for recruiting
  • VP Public Relations: for propagating
  • Treasurer: for budgeting
  • Secretary: for record keeping
  • Sergeant-at-Arms: for logistics and office support

If you are not only interested in practicing your public speaking with the Toastmasters by attending our biweekly meetings, but also interested in practicing your leadership skills which requires communication, follow up, responsibility and many other qualities, then please reach out to us and indicate which role you volunteer for.

Our club election will be on 28. June. You are invited to attend this event in the beautiful Ebert Park Ludwigshafen (close to the Tor 2), no matter you want to vote or to be voted or just want to enjoy this wonderful summer weather and mingle with the others. Those members who delivered his icebreaker speech or achieved his 1st/2nd level in the pathways or achieved his CL/ALB/ACB/ACS last year will have the opportunity again to obtain his plaques. We hope to see you all on 28. June in the Ebert Park and have a good time until then!

14 Mar

Using Mind Map & Creating Action

Dear Toastmasters and Guests,

We cordially invite you fellow Toastmasters and guests to attend the upcoming online Workshop hosted by Area F1 taking place on 22 March 2021 at 17:45pm.
Martin Ernst (DTM, BASF Toastmasters) will be presenting about “Mind-Mapping” on how to formulate your Thoughts & Ideas.
Al Green, (DTM, Ramstein Speakers Association) will be presenting about “Creating Action Through Speaking”).
This workshop will help booster your confidence level and provide you with tools, that will help ignite your communication skills.
Please register for the event by filling up this form:

 

 

 

 

 

Yours truly,
Piyali Bhaumik
Area Director – District 95, Area F1

13 Dec

Season’s Greetings 2020/2021

Dear fellow Toastmasters and Guests

Our last meeting in 2020 will be different. At the Online Christmas special event on 14 Decenber, we are going to unwrap our virtual Christmas gift, take a look into fellow members’ fridges and listen to an inspiring speech given by dam McConnaughy, President of Ramstein TM club. For those accepting the invitation, we kindly ask you to provide pictures of your (virtual) Christmas gift and your fridge inside & outside (yes!!)

For the start of 2021 we will firstly meet on 11 January.

Please note that these online meetings will be conducted on Skype. Have a peaceful holiday season and a happy new year!

Sincerely Yours
Officers 2020/2021 of BASF Toastmasters

21 Nov

Stay connected with Toastmasters!

The COVID-19 global pandemic is challenging us. Actions used to be harmless – handshake, hugs or just being in a group, now have potential to make us sick and spread the virus even further. In order to follow the government order, our club decided to move our Face2face meeting back to Online.

However, social distancing does not need to mean social disconnecting. Thanks to the Internet and today’s modern technologies, we don’t have to stuck at home alone, feel lonely and isolated. We can still keep seeing each other every two weeks via Zoom/WebEx to check on everyone and to keep our sprites light. We can even consider volunteer efforts to provide needed services in order to stay together, while keeping ourselves and others safe at the same time. As a team, we believe we can overcome this hard time easier together than alone. Thus, please come to join our Online Toastmasters meetings.

Please stay safe and stay connected.

30 Sep

Happy together!

This last Monday we had the opportunity to retake on site meetings again in BASF Toastmasters. After more than 6 months performing online meetings it was time to meet our fellow Toastmasters again.

Online meetings have its own advantages because they provide an easy access for other toastmasters around the globe to connect and interact with our recurrent team in LU. Connecting from home also implies a decrease in personal contact which given the current situation can be beneficial to avoid the transmission of Coronavirus.

This was one of the main reasons why several members of the club still requested the possibility to participate online (together with our on-site members) so that they would not miss the opportunity to continue improving their public speaking skills.

For this reason the club conducted the first hybrid meeting, connecting people from home with our members from Ludwigshaffen that were sitting in our meeting room. The meeting went effortlessly and the feedback received from our online-members was very positive and reinforced the idea that hybrid meetings are indeed a great opportunity to connect both worlds and facilitate that everyone feels included wherever they want to be.

Mondays meeting started with a short round of introductions and later continued with one of our members presenting a very nice well done speech about  happiness, having in consideration that the topic of the day was “HAPPY TOGETHER”  😊

We later continued with a short break and the “On-site” members got the opportunity to get to know a little bit better all new faces attending while also drinking coffee together.  Afterwards we performed a TABLE TOPICS session where impromptu speaking took place and members needed to create imaginary stories at the same time they were given different pictures about totally different unrelated topics. Many funny crazy stories happened there! It was a great evening and a happy reencounter for all our members in BASF Toastmasters!