Author Archives: Martin Ernst

23 Jun

A Decade of Empowered Communication

Celebrating a significant milestone, the BASF Toastmasters Club marks its 10th anniversary as an official member of the global Toastmasters Community. Over the past decade, this vibrant club has been instrumental in fostering a supportive environment where professionals at BASF and members from outside of BASF have enhanced their public speaking and leadership skills. Through regular meetings, workshops, and speech contests, members have embraced continuous learning and personal growth. The club’s success is a testament to its commitment to the Toastmasters ethos, empowering individuals to become more effective communicators and leaders. Today, we celebrate a decade of growth, eloquence, and fellowship. Congratulations, BASF Toastmasters, on ten years of excellence!

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 May 26, 2025, 17:30 - 19:30, most certainly you’ll have as much fun as we had already in the past!

07 Nov

Entspannt das freie Reden trainieren

Those who join BASF Toastmasters can improve their rhetorical skills noticeably. Now our offer is expanded: You can train public speaking also in German now! Our colleagues from BASF Rheinklick visited one of our hybrid-meetings. See →here what they wrote, without access to BASF’s intranet you’ll find a printed version →here.

Alle, die BASF Toastmasters regelmäßig besuchen, verbessern ihre rhetorischen Fähigkeiten erkennbar. Nun bieten wir unsere Clubabende bilingual an — auf unseren Treffen wird auf Deutsch oder auf Englisch gesprochen. Unsere Kolleginnen der BASF Rheinklick Redaktion haben eins unserer Hybrid-Meetings besucht. →Hier ist der Artikel (ohne Zugriff aufs BASF Intranet →hier).

picture / Bild: BASF

21 Jun

“Double” hybrid meeting in June

Dear Toastmasters and Guests

Please be cordially invited to our meeting on Monday, 27th June 2022. This meeting will be our first double hybrid meeting ever! Hybrid means that on the one hand we will meet again in Ludwigshafen at BASF site in building J660 in room 136 and enable your participation also via MS-Teams.

Double hybrid means, that we are offering the opportunity to give a speech in German as well! So we welcome also those who would like to improve their German speaking skills!! Our English speaking Club Members continue their strong support with excellent speeches.

Let´s finish the ending Toastmasters year and also start the new term together at our meeting on 27th June 2022. You are welcome to contact us any time you want.

08 Feb

Continue your journey with Toastmasters

Dear fellow Toastmasters
spring will come soon which also means that you can extend your Toastmasters membership at our club! Continue your individual journey with Pathways and enjoy full access to toastmasters.org with all its digital resources. BASF Toastmasters currently meets online but will be having face-to-face meetings as soon as possible.
Therefore we kindly ask you to remit 6 x 8 EUR / month = 48 EUR (2022-04–2022-09) to BASF Toastmasters’ bank account!
On request an invoice for membership payments can be issued. 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 us in case you have any questions!

01 Jan

Welcome to 2022!

Dear fellow Toastmasters and Guests

the year of 2022 has just started and this can be the year where you make the important step to become a better speaker and presenter? We welcome you to participate actively in our meetings in January! Join in from wherever you are because this month will only be online meetings!

Meetings on Monday 10th and 24th Januaray will open on 17:45 and last until ca. 19:30 including a small break.

Want to prepare a speech or short presentation? Use easySPEAK  to enroll for your favorite activity or contact  us! You don’t believe online presentations can be fun?! Then you simply must participate!!

Yours Club Officers, BASF Toastmasters

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.

16 Jul

26 July: Our 1st offline meeting in 2021

Dear BASF Toastmasters and Guests

You are cordially invited to our next Toastmasters meeting on 26 July 2021. Please do join us for the “Meet and Greet” session at 17:45. The meeting itself will start at 18:00.
Please check the agenda on EasySpeak . There are still several roles left. Grab them as soon as you can!
If you are interested in joining the meeting online by Skype please let us know to get the access code. We look forward to welcoming you and spending a wonderful, entertaining and productive evening together. Should you have any inquiries, please feel free to contact us.
You are welcome to join the meeting as an external visitor, please take a look at the meeting information. 

Coronavirus: Precautionary measures at Ludwigshafen site

  • names of participants will be kept to identify possible contacts in the event of a COVID-19 infection
  • wear a medical or FFP2 face mask when entering the building
  • if the meeting room doesn’t allow a distance of >1,5m to each other a face mask is mandatory