Toastmasters

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I write out my speeches, and since I need glasses to read I avoid using them by typing the speech in a size 33 Calibri font. For me, at my regular pace of speaking it equals about six minutes of speaking time, more or less. Then practice with a timer at home ALWAYS - if the buzzer bugs you, then turn on a ticking metronome to help get over that. (Talk about nerveracking at first! I was physically jumping when timers were going off. ) Eventually you get a good sense of timing so the green, yellow and red light doesn't throw you as much, and as soon as you see yellow you find a way to jump to the end and wrap it up.

A friend of mine took that to the extreme. He had the notes in big print carefully arranged in a looseleaf binder with the time in the upper right corner for each page. He practiced delivering the speech, and could skip ahead to the right point if got behind just by looking at the times. It was a beautiful, carefully set-up job, but he screwed up at one point. He left the binder where I could get at it just before his speech. :twisted:

[amused]

We had four speeches that night, mine was last. Another woman who I'd seen flub an evaluator competition was sitting across the aisle from me, so I saw her preparing for her speech. She had the whole thing printed out in one large block of text that ran over several pages. She flubbed the speech because she got lost and ran over time.

I think it's because she needs to break the speech into coherent blocks that then have 'hooks' that connect them together. The limited time for a speech (she had 5-7 minutes) forces you to hone it down to the basics, and then deliver it in a pre-determined order that leads from one concept to the next. I'm wondering out loud here, if her problem might also be a difference in male-female psychology where women tend to see things as interconnected, while men tend to compartmentalize. What is needed are the compartments of the speech to create the order, and then the interconnectivity to bring an over-arching binding.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

How hard is toast to master, please?

[amused]

How hard is toast to master, please?

Apparently, pretty hard!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

How hard is toast to master, please?

Apparently, pretty hard!

I'm working with Ayaan on that.

[maiforpeace]

We had four speeches that night, mine was last. Another woman who I'd seen flub an evaluator competition was sitting across the aisle from me, so I saw her preparing for her speech. She had the whole thing printed out in one large block of text that ran over several pages. She flubbed the speech because she got lost and ran over time.

I think it's because she needs to break the speech into coherent blocks that then have 'hooks' that connect them together. The limited time for a speech (she had 5-7 minutes) forces you to hone it down to the basics, and then deliver it in a pre-determined order that leads from one concept to the next. I'm wondering out loud here, if her problem might also be a difference in male-female psychology where women tend to see things as interconnected, while men tend to compartmentalize. What is needed are the compartments of the speech to create the order, and then the interconnectivity to bring an over-arching binding.

I think it all comes to practice...if you practice enough you will find your weak spots, regardless of how you organize yourself.

And, as Aphophenia points out, giving speeches about subjects you are already familiar with helps. If you get stuck, you still have something to fill in the silent spot.

[maiforpeace]

While cleaning out my dropbox I found a speech I gave to my Toastmasters group that you may appreciate, amused. It caused a bit of controversy in our club. I'm so glad I gave it though because it did stop the nonsense that was going to make me leave the club if it didn't stop. Also, a number of people did come to me privately later to thank me for it.

I’m Coming Out of the Closet!

By Mai Dao-Horton

A couple of years ago I was naturalized and became an American citizen. What an amazing experience. In a room
full of people from all over the world, they did a roll call where they named every country of the world represented
and had everyone stand up when the country name was called. It was moving, it was touching, it brought a myriad
of people all over the world together in a country that that professes freedom for all.

When the spoken part of the ceremony began, the name of God was invoked 32 times.

For me what started as a personal, intimately important experience was shadowed by language that had no
meaning for me at all and in some cases was offensive. No doubt this was also the case for those people attending
that believe in Allah, Yahweh and Xenu.

Mr. Toastmaster, and fellow Toastmasters.

As I look around this room I see every color of the rainbow in this group when it comes ethnic and religious
backgrounds. I celebrate the diversity everyone brings to the table, and with this diversity comes a myriad of life
stories.

I also suspect, because of this diversity at some point or another some of you may have been made to feel
discriminated against or excluded because you had different religious or spiritual beliefs from others.
So, it may come as great surprise to many of you to know that I have experienced that feeling here at Toastmaster’s
- a feeling of being excluded and outside of the group when I was asked to participate in activities I neither believe
in or are comfortable doing.

So today, I make a call to you to consider the importance of supporting a spiritually and religious neutral
environment at Toastmaster’s meetings.

Over the recent past couple of years a number of our members have used being the Toastmaster of the Day, the
Thought of the Day, their scheduled speech and their table topics response as an opportunity to lead the rest of the
group in guided visualizations and/or meditations. I appreciate these are practices that you strongly believe in. I
respect that you want to share what is, in your life of great wealth to you with the rest of us. You see the positive
effects these practices have in yours and many other people’s lives and know that this can contribute to a better
world. Please know how grateful I am for the generosity of spirit you show, the spirit behind your intentions when
taking it upon yourself to lead the rest of us in a guided visualization. Over time, I have come to know, respect and
care deeply about each of you as we have shared our personal stories. I am confident that I have come to know all
of you well enough to know that your only interest in sharing these practices is one of absolute good will.

I also recognize that many of these practices have become mainstream in all kinds of venues and are practiced for
other reasons beyond religious ones. Lots of people gain great personal benefits from these practices, and better
yet, they help them to excel in Toastmasters. I celebrate anything that helps others to do better in Toastmasters. I
believe in any person’s right to practice whatever they believe, and encourage any among you to continue practicing
those things that give your life meaning.

However, for me as an Atheist, and for other minorities, including even some religious ones guided visualizations
and meditations are not only practices we don’t believe in, but they are practices that make us very uncomfortable
to be pressed into participating in. I use the word “pressed” because in those cases I mentioned where someone
took it upon themselves to initiate a visualization guiding the entire group, they did not realize that there might be
some among us that find the activity uncomfortable and even perhaps offensive. I understand that it may not have
occurred to some in the group that the practice of visualizing or meditating, that are so meaningful to to you, might
not induce the same response in others.

I have not felt comfortable leaving the room because I did not want to offend anyone. Toastmasters meetings are
meaningful to me, so I do not want to miss out on them by leaving. But it makes it difficult to focus, for me, on the
remainder of the meeting after I have been pressed into participating in such activities because I am feeling so
uncomfortable and a sense of being disrespected.

I have my own personal reasons, as well as more general reasons why I don’t believe in these practices and why
they make me uncomfortable. I invite you to learn more about Atheism if you are interested in knowing more why,
and learn a little more about the myriad of world views Atheists have because you might be tickled to learn that
there are as many types of atheists as there are varieties of Buddhists or Christians. But it’s not my intention to
address the characteristics or merits of what I don’t believe in. We all know from personal experience that a
discussion about religion and spirituality can be fraught with controversy and difficulty and are best kept out of a
public forum such as Toastmasters meetings.

So, to that end I would encourage all among us to consider the audience when discussing or practicing religion or
spiritual activities. To be fully inclusive of all races, ethnicities, and religions avoid practices that might exclude one
group or the other. Being inclusive of our entire audience is going to be the most effective way to gain their full
interest and support.

Instead, coming up with a universal activity that everyone can get behind is a great way to build community and
camaraderie. Avoiding activities like invocations which call on a higher power, or a Pledge of Allegiance that
requires you are an American citizen or American supporter will avoid excluding anyone. When you feel you might
like to lead the group in a spiritual practice, might I suggest instead challenging yourself to take an approach of
seeking other creative ways that are not belief based to engage your audience, especially if you are trying to engage
people with different world views from your own.

And, while my experience of visualization and meditation are limited, my understanding of participating in such
practices are predicated on the assumption that everyone participating has fully consented to the activity. So, even
if you were to ask permission first it still puts me in the untenable position of having to say no and potentially
offending the person who wants to lead such an activity.

It was the Danbury Baptists, in 1801, a small Christian religious group that made the plea to Jefferson for protection
of their rights to practice their religion without being overcome by other larger religious groups. They wrote to him
about their concerns, to which he replied in his famous letter back, describing (and I quote) “that act of the whole
American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

So, today I invite you to keep that wall of separation here at Toastmasters.

By abstaining from practices that are in any way religious or have a spiritual origin during Toastmasters you are
considering the needs of every person here, not just some. Keeping the Toastmasters venue a neutral welcoming
ground engages everyone and is inclusive rather than exclusive.

[amused]

Well done mai, and very brave of you to do it.

[Ronja]

Well done mai, and very brave of you to do it.

+ a million! I hope if I ever am in a situation where I can do something similar, I will have the courage and the eloquence to say something as constructive and honest.

[maiforpeace]

Well done mai, and very brave of you to do it.

+ a million! I hope if I ever am in a situation where I can do something similar, I will have the courage and the eloquence to say something as constructive and honest.

Thanks guys. I've competed in five Toastmasters contests and given around 40 speeches in my club now, but this one was definitely the most nerveracking of them all...I was visibly shaking by the time I was done.

[Faithfree]

Well done mai, and very brave of you to do it.

+ a million! I hope if I ever am in a situation where I can do something similar, I will have the courage and the eloquence to say something as constructive and honest.

Thanks guys. I've competed in five Toastmasters contests and given around 40 speeches in my club now, but this one was definitely the most nerveracking of them all...I was visibly shaking by the time I was done.

That was a good speach, Mai, well done!

[MiM]

Well done mai, and very brave of you to do it.

+ a million! I hope if I ever am in a situation where I can do something similar, I will have the courage and the eloquence to say something as constructive and honest.

Thanks guys. I've competed in five Toastmasters contests and given around 40 speeches in my club now, but this one was definitely the most nerveracking of them all...I was visibly shaking by the time I was done.

Well, then again that was clearly no training or competition speech, but a both personal and political speech aimed to influence your audience directly. All the more kudos to you for pulling that through.

[amused]

I did my second speech, on organization. For some reason it just would not stick in my memory, and I stumbled a bit. The title/theme was 'less is more' and I ended up running over time.

Mai - One of the examples I used was the short story attributed to Hemingway, not confirmed, which is supposedly the shortest story ever told:

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

I didn't want to post that in your grave marker thread because it might come off as a joke, but it's a different way of saying something other than poetry.

[maiforpeace]

I did my second speech, on organization. For some reason it just would not stick in my memory, and I stumbled a bit. The title/theme was 'less is more' and I ended up running over time.

I hate it when that happens.

When you get to your tenth project you will look fondly, and with amusement at this one.

Mai - One of the examples I used was the short story attributed to Hemingway, not confirmed, which is supposedly the shortest story ever told:

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

I didn't want to post that in your grave marker thread because it might come off as a joke, but it's a different way of saying something other than poetry.

Aww. The sentiment is very sweet, but I'm afraid my cousin's wouldn't get it.

[Ayaan]

How hard is toast to master, please?

Apparently, pretty hard!

I'm working with Ayaan on that.