A lot of people who want to become Waikiki Toastmasters wonder what a meeting is like. Using our open house in June 2024, here is how a typical meeting goes.
The Club President opens the meeting and takes care of any preliminary club business that needs to be discussed.
Then the Toastmaster of the Evening starts the meeting proper. Typically she or he introduces the theme of the meeting. Each meeting has a theme, and the theme is sent out with the agenda a day or so before the meeting.
The Toastmaster of the Evening then introduces the roles for that evening (more on that below).
In general, the Toastmaster of the Evening acts as the emcee throughout the remainder of the meeting.
The very first speech is the inspiration speech for the meeting. This a short speech that, as its name suggests, sets the inspirational tone for the meeting.
If you are not sure about public speaking, this is often a good speech to start out with. You can use whatever inspires you, including quotations from other people,
The various meeting roles are introduced. At Waikiki Toastmasters we have:
- A Timer, who times speeches
- An "Ah counter", who tracks filler words
- A Grammarian, who listens for good and bad language and gives the word-of-the-day
This is a good role for new members, as you start off reading from the script for the role, as Juliette is doing here.
The main part of the meeting is the prepared speeches.
Speeches are usually 5-7 minutes long, although special topics can stretch that. Each speech has a goal for the speech, but the content is up to you. For example, the first speech - called an Icebreaker - is simply to talk about something you know a lot more about than anyone else: yourself. There are no other expectations beyond that. Each speech after that has a goal. For example, one goal may be to concentrate on your body language, another to work on vocal variety, etc.
We have three or four speeches each meeting. For our open house, we had three seasoned speakers:
Golden Kahumoku talked about his Toastmasters journey, including Improv and stand-up comedy, in a speech titled "Glorious Moments"
Breea Yamat walked through her night winning Miss Hawaii USA - a night for which many of her fellow Toastmasters were in the audience - including the 'question from hell' that she was presented with and her thought process in answering it.
Shane-nah Martin gave the speech that won her the District speech award, titled "The World Needs the Real You". This is a speech Shane-nah worked very hard on and represents a high level of Toastmasters achievement.
After the prepared speeches, we move to the unprepared speeches, impromptu speeches we call "Table Topics".
Table Topics could be pretty much anything. That's the idea - speaking on a topic that you just heard about. Some can be funny, some serious, some intended-to-be-serious-but-instead-funny, etc.
A Table Topics Master asks the questions (like Mike at the right, clowning around) and calls on people at the meeting to answer.
The answers are typically 1-2 minutes.
We try to include guests in Table Topics, if they want. Please do not feel obligated to participate. A lot of guests are pleasantly surprised how well they do with Table Topics.
In the last part of the meeting are the evaluations, where we give feedback to each other.
Each speech receives specific feedback focused on the growth of the speaker.
The various roles (Timer, Ah Counter, and Grammarian) give feedback to everyone who spoke that night.
Finally, the person running this portion of the meeting (called the General Evaluator) gives an evaluation of the meeting as a whole.
To end the meeting, the Club President takes care of any remaining business for the night.
There you have it: a quick snapshot of a Waikiki Toastmasters meeting.
Please come join us at our next meeting!
