Public Speaking Club/Group Activities

Ah Counter - Everyone talks with "filler" words: ah, um, so, you know, anyway, etc. The Ah counter keeps track of them and lets us know how we do.

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Love it! This is actually one of my pet peeves. It's annoying enough in everyday conversation, but a (professional) public speaker should have as few fillers as possible.

Me, I think I'd end up as the joke master. Or mistress.

It does sound like fun.

I agree. Toastmasters is fun. Where else can you speak about just about anything and receive a round of applause? It's a great place to experiment. And, I find it amazing to see members grow as they become more comfortable and skilled at speaking.

JenNipps said:

On a weekly basis, we rotate tasks.

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Jen,
I am curious how your club assigns the roles. Do you have a schedule with all members rotating through each role? Our club asks for volunteers for each of the roles, which doesn't seem to work well. There are some members that don't volunteer regularly and certain roles that are harder to fill.

Oarsman, I attend Toastmasters with Jen. Our group has a vice-president of education. He/she is in charge of the monthly schedules. Each month he puts together a spreadsheet with every member's name, email and phone #. Across the top he has the dates with the topic of the week. We use the weekly topic to come up with table topics questions, but I understand many groups don't do that. If yours doesn't you could just list the date. Then across from each member's name is a task; timekeeper, table topics, toastmaster, master at arms, ah counter, grammarian, speaker, general evaluator, speech evaluator, and away. I think that's all of them. If a member doesn't have a duty they are fair game for table topics, although sometimes even those with a duty must do table topics because we don't have enough members present. Our rule, or request, is if you are unable to attend for any reason, it's your job to find a substitute to do your job. Sometimes, despite a person's best efforts they don't get a sub, in that case they just let the toastmaster of the week know, and he finds someone to fill in once he/she gets to the meeting.

I hope that makes sense. Oh, "away" means the member plans to not attend that meeting, that way no jobs are assigned. Jen will be "away" several meetings next month.

I hate being ah counter. Ask Jen, I whine everytime it's my turn as we drive to the meeting. It's a two hour drive. But, I do the job, it really helps me, but I still hate doing it.

ritinrider,
Our VP of education is focused more on educating new members. We really don't have someone in charge of assigning the tasks at our club. We use the free web site (http://www.freetoasthost.org/). It has a web page for our club with our meeting dates and tasks. Members get onto the web site and volunteer for the job they want to do. You can probably imagine that some members always pick the same job and some don't sign up. I like your club's approach with rotating the tasks. It keeps all the members involved and not doing the same job each meeting. Our club is fairly new, so I am curious how other groups operate.

I was the ah-counter at one of our meeting a few weeks ago and when the toastmaster asked me to explain my job, I started with: "ah...my role is the ah-counter". I didn't realize how much I use "ah" and "um".

Yes, it's true, I disliked timekeeping more. But, since Ike (another Toastmaster) helped me last time it wasn't as bad. I don't feel like I'm rushing the speaker when I'm timekeeper I just get too interested in the speech and forget to turn the lights on. Since part of public speaking is to keep our presentations within the parameters of the allotted time, the timekeeper is a valuable asset to the speaker for this.

Speakers at our meeting are allowed to determine the time it will take to give their speech, but we try to keep them between 5 and 7 minutes. Recently, to help keep speakers from going too far over their asked for time we've started a gentle, loving, clap down. Which this mean is 30 seconds after the red light comes on, the timekeeper will begin softly and the other members will join in with the soft clapping. This lets the speaker know he/she has gone well over the time limit and they can rapidly wrap up their speech.

Oarsman, one reason for the rotating tasks is to try and make sure everyone gets a chance to speak. We are after all a group of aspiring speakers, we all need the practice. We have two vice-presidents in our group. One is the vice-president of education and does the assignment sheet, I'm not sure what else. The other one is the vice-president of membership, this is who is responsible for talking to new members and such. Also, if you aren't sure what the duties of each job are, there is a description in the back of your toastmaster book. At the beginning of the meeting the toastmaster (I think) introduces everyone with a job. The job holder then stands and explains his or her job.

It's always good to hear what other groups do. Our topics master a couple of weeks ago told us how some other groups do their table topics. Gotta say, I like our way, but I can see how the other methods would be helpful too.

The red light means the time the speaker gave for the speech is up.

We've had several speeches since the clapdown was agreed on and only one speaker has received it. I'm not sure how she felt about it. I'll let you know how our group feels about it as we become more accustomed to it.

We have some problems with speakers going way past their allotted time. We don't have lights. We have a green, yellow, and red flag that the timekeeper holds up or puts on a table. I remember one speaker going past 7, 8, and 9 minutes. I tried to make eye contact with her and move the red flag a bit, but she kept on going. I felt like I was rushing her, but the time guidelines keep the speakers from taking time from other speakers and affecting the schedule. Awareness of the time is an important skill for a speaker.

We have all the tasks of your group, except for a Joke Master. I would like having a Joke Master. We have a member give a "Tip of the Day" at the begining of each meeting. It could be a speaking tip, advice, or an interesting quote. We also have a ballot system (with a ballot counter) where members vote on their favorite speech and the winner gets a ribbon.

It sounds like our table topics are done differently than your group. We don't have a preassigned theme and have no idea what the table topics will be before the meeting. The topic master comes up with topics on their own and pick members at random in the meeting to speak. Typically, the topic master will pick someone that hasn't had an opportunity to speak.

The clapdown idea is interesting. You'll have to let me know how it goes with your group.