Ideas For 2012-2013 At Goodyear Toastmasters

by Promod Sharma, President 2011-2012, CC

Here are ideas for the 2012-2013 year at Goodyear Toastmasters. The thoughts may be useful for other clubs too.

Pre-Assigning Roles

The VP of Education prepares a monthly spreadsheet assigning members to roles. Each week, changes get made, which reduces the value of the advance preparation. Sometimes members are away and might not respond to emails.

Is there a more efficient way to fill roles? The new FreeToastHost 2.0 website may allow other options.

The Chair

The week's Chair selects the meeting's theme and sends out the roster with the roles pre-assigned by the VP of Education. The ideal time is just after the Thursday meetings (e.g., on Friday or Saturday). This isn't always done, which reduces the time available to fill vacant roles.

Can the Chair be encouraged to send out the roster earlier?

Guests

Guests join our Meetup group but might not visit the club. Guests who do visit may not return, though they remain our Meetup group.

Can more be done to follow-up with the guests who vanish. Maybe more activity can take place on Meetup?

Public Relations

Guests are often surprised at how enjoyable and educational our meetings are. Sessions are not like classes or presentations. How about recording a full meeting and putting a short summary on YouTube? This would show potential guests how a meeting runs and also exude the club's personality.

Perhaps more photos can be taken and posted online. Maybe there could be photos taken at each meeting. Perhaps the videographer does this or perhaps members take photos with their smartphones. There's a side benefit: when we look back years later, we'll have more memories to enjoy.

More Participation

Club members can participate more by

• RSVPing on Meetup to help the meeting Chair see who's available for roles and to show guests how many attend a meeting
• posting more videos on YouTube to archive personal development and show others what happens in the club
• writing blog posts and comments here since public writing is an extension of public speaking
• subscribing to our Twitter channel to learn more about speaking-related topics
• adding Goodyear Toastmasters to their LinkedIn profiles to get credit for membership

How do you think our club could be made better?

Links

• Highlights from 2011-2012
• Annoying guests with attention
• Turbocharge your club with social media
• image courtesy of ppdigital

Promod finished his term as President last week. He plans to write one post a week until June 30, 2013. His website is promodsharma.com.