One State Street Toastmasters Hartford, Connecticut

6/24/20

 

Is Zoom the best platform to use for online Toastmaster meetings?  That’s the question I asked myself when I saw that One State Street Toastmasters was using Microsoft Teams as their platform for their Toastmaster meeting.  After being part of the meeting, in my opinion YES!!! Zoom is much better than Microsoft Teams.  This club meets at the workspace and I assume many were using work computers and that is why I, as a guest couldn’t see their faces.  I couldn’t see the first speaker and I would hear the timer chirp in every now and then with “green”, “yellow”.  There was no visual-no lights, no cards, no colors.  The people that I did see on video I assume were using the computer outside of the workspace.  But that is just conjecture, I don’t know for sure.  But even the “circles” of participants had only their initials so we didn’t know their names. Maybe it’s a privacy issue.  In any event, to me, it made me feel disconnected from the other participants at the meeting.

 

One State Street Toastmasters has 15 members and 13 educational goals.  Wow 13 educational goals! They are definitely working the legacy and Pathways programs!  They use WordPress for their website which to me is not enticing to the eye.  However, they do have a FAQ section which contains good information about Toastmasters.  There was a rushed feel to the club as with many midday meetings. They had two speakers and two Table Topics responses, and barely finished on time, this is probably due to having 10 guests and them taking time to introduce themselves

 

They took time to explain all the roles, which was good for visitors who had never been to a Toastmasters club.  One thing I really liked was people used chat a lot.  They put the WOD and meeting sections in chat but the best part is they used chat to “encourage” each other.  Some of the chats that I read: “great report,” “thanks,” “point well taken,” “great feedback,” “great virtual background on your screen.”

 

In person, this meeting probably POPS, but online I didn’t come away with a good feeling.  Again, though, this could be due to  the online platform they were using.  So my vote is still ZOOM for the best platform to use for online Toastmasters meetings.  Go on, convince me otherwise.