Ozark Orators Rolla, Missouri

5/29/2020

A sign of a good club, one that could one day be great, is that the members ask for honest feedback about their club.  This is what I found in Ozark Orators.  They had 11 attendees counting Steve and myself.  What I saw in their club, similar to others we have attended, is members tend to not log on until meeting time or close to it. The starting time for this meeting was 8:00 and the first person logged on at 7:55.  If this was a brick-and-mortar meeting would the members run in at starting time?  I don't know.  

In my home club, our meeting starts at 6:00 and the Sgt At Arms gets there by 5:30 to start setting up. Members start pouring in anywhere from 5:30 to help the Sgt At Arms to 5:55.  By 6:00 most members are there to start the meeting.  The speakers have already set up any needs for their speeches. Voting ballots passed out. But most importantly, we get there early to greet guests.  We have them sign a sign in sheet, give them a guest packet, help them find a seat near another member, and chit chat a little with them.  Now that our club has gone online we still open the meeting at 5:30 and members start coming in and meet and greet each other, talk with visitors, discuss times of speeches and the Toastmasters makes sure all the roles are filled.  That way none of this needs to take place during the limited 1 hour and 15 minute club meeting.  

This of course is my opinion, but now that I have visited about 20 online clubs and sat waiting in a holding area to log on the the meeting, I do feel strongly about this.  To see valuable time used for setup, assigning roles and such during the time the meeting has officially started, I really see the importance of getting there earlier than the start time.  This will have to be club culture change and their officers will need to see the importance of this and they may not unless they start visiting other clubs.

On to what I started saying in the beginning.  The BEST part of this club is after the meeting, the president asked us to give feedback.  But not just that.  She said since we have visited other clubs, how does their club stack up.  In comparison to my home club, what do they do the same and differently.  I really appreciate that she had such an open spirit to wanting to hear honest feedback. Hopefully we helped her a little and we invited her to visit our club and other clubs too.  I think visiting other clubs whether brick-and-mortar or online will help a person SEE things people do differently and can gain valuable insight and ideas to making a club better.  In fact, a lot of ideas our club has implemented over the years is from theft.  We stole ideas from watching other clubs.  That is something I would recommend to all members.  Visit other clubs.  It is especially easy during this time while all clubs are online.