What Happens at a Meeting

Meetings are friendly and relaxed, preceded by dinner and socializing in the comfortable non-smoking meeting room downstairs at the café-restaurant Le Moulin a Café. The menu offers varied, traditional French cuisine. Large dinner salads as well as copious hot dishes are available for a reasonable price.

The basic Toastmasters meeting structure is an organized variety of speaking opportunities. At each meeting, as many members as possible have a speaking role, each with a specific purpose. Members take turns with roles, so every meeting is different. Don’t worry, guests are not expected to get up and give a speech!

photo courtesy of Anusha Khurana

An outline of the major speaking roles and events of a typical meeting is as follows:

The Sergeant-at-Arms calls the meeting to order and introduces the Club President who announces any club news and introduces the guests.

The Toastmaster of the Evening is a club member who leads the meeting, acting as master of ceremonies for the evening.

Table Topics:

This is a segment of improvised speaking, which is led by the Table Topics Master. He/she prepares a topic and questions in advance to pose to various members of the audience who are NOT advised beforehand. Therefore there is no preparation or rehearsal on the part of people who are chosen to answer a table topic question.

Table Topics challenges the audience to listen well, think fast and communicate effectively. Topics can be fun or serious, on virtually any subject possible. Participants have one to two minutes to respond. The audience votes for the Best Table Topic speaker.

Prepared Speeches:

Three to five club members give prepared speeches which fulfill objectives described in the basic and advanced manuals supplied by Toastmasters International. Most speeches last five to seven minutes. Advanced speeches can last longer.

Speech topics are chosen by the speaker and can be on any subject desired. You will enjoy the diversity of the speeches and speaking styles. The audience votes for the Best Speaker of the evening.

Evaluations:

This segment is led by the General Evaluator. Each prepared speech is assigned an individual Evaluator. The purpose of evaluations is to offer constructive feedback to help members become better speakers. Evaluators acknowledge what was done well and may have suggestions for improvement. Each Evaluation lasts 2 to 3 minutes. The audience votes on the Best Evaluator.

There are also short evaluations by the Grammarian, who reports on our use of language, the Timer, who has noted the duration of each presentation, and the Ah-Counter, who keeps track of every um, ah and other speech stumbles. The General Evaluator then assesses the entire meeting.

Awards: The winners of the voting for Best Table Topics, Best Speaker and Best Evaluator are awarded ribbons.

Closing: Guests have a chance to share their impressions of the evening.

Guests are welcome to visit a meeting with no further obligation.

For the time and location of meetings, click here.

For the calendar of meeting dates click here.