21st Century Toastmasters Colorado Springs, Colorado

5/29/2020

It is always comforting to go to a club that has pretty much the same format, same type of agenda, names of roles, and times of roles as my home club.  This is what happened at 21st Century.  This was like the comfort of wearing my favorite pair of slippers.  However, there was one big difference.  They said the pledge at the beginning of their meeting.  We do not have a lot of clubs that do that in our division but since we have been traveling around to different clubs we have seen a lot of clubs that do this.  

This club had 10 attending including Steve and myself.  I was glad to see them start on time.  Many clubs we have observed over the years do not do this, which I think is very important for Toastmaster clubs to do.

  

If I had any suggestions to give them, I would say to get more familiar with the chat box in Zoom.  And regarding table topics to ask the question first, then call on the person. This gives all the attendees time to listen to the question and formulate an answer.  However, I realize that all clubs do things differently.  This is just something we have emphasized in our club.  They also called on speakers to answer table topic questions when there were other members ready and willing to answer questions.  This however is something we have to keep reminding members in my club also when they take on the role of Table Topics Master.  The Table Topics Master just has to be aware of who is or is not speaking that day and try to call on the ones with lesser or no speaking roles.  These are areas that many other clubs have to work on as does my home club. 

As Toastmasters we are a work in progress.  We are always learning and striving for ways of getting better in ourselves and running the club. That's what Toastmasters is all about.