The Meeting

You're probably curious about what goes on in a Toastmaster meeting. If you've never been before, it's quite an experience! Although there is no way to re-create the excitement, fun and creativeness that goes on there, we can give you a general run-down of a typical meeting.

7pm - The President of the club calls the meeting to order.

7 to 7:15pm - Considered the business portion of the meeting, the club hears committee and officer reports, we also discuss various projects the club is undertaking. This is where a toastmaster can develop their leadership skills and become more adept at using parliamentary procedure.

7:15 to 8:30 - the "Educational" portion of the meeting. The presiding officer turns over the meeting to the "Toastmaster" of the evening.

Our meetings usually have "themes". The Toastmaster will offer a "warm-up". This is generally 2-3 minutes of remarks based on the theme of the evening. This sets the tone of the meeting and puts everyone in the right mood.

Next, the Wordmaster is called up to offer the meeting's special word. Throughout the course of the meeting everyone will attempt to use the word in their speaking.

The Toastmaster now introduces the Table Topics Master. It is their job to call upon other toastmasters at random to get up and speak "off the cuff" on any subject the Table Topics Master chooses. Sounds fun doesn't it?

After Table Topics, the Master Evaluator gets up and introduces his team of evaluators. This includes Speech Evaluators, the Grammarian, the Parliamentarian and Timer for the evening.

Now comes the grand moment, the Speakers, they are the stars of the evening! At each meeting there are usually 2-3 speakers and each speech, if given from a manual, will be from 5-11 minutes. It is here that you can learn quite a bit about your fellow toastmasters. Each of us has varied interests and perspectives.

The speeches have just concluded, the Master Evaluator is called back up and he introduces the Evaluators who will then give each speaker instant feedback of their speech. The Evaluator will give positive feedback on the speaker's strengths and also point out areas that the speaker could improve on.

After the Evaluations are done, the Master Evaluator will call upon the Grammarian, Parliamentarian and Timer for their reports.

The Grammarian reports on the club's usage of the English language. Filler words, as well as style and sentence structure are monitored.

The Parliamentarian will report on how well we adhered to Parliamentary procedure during the business session of the meeting.

The Timer is called upon throughout the meeting for the times on all speeches, evaluations and Table Topics.

Now the Toastmaster of the evening finishes up with a few closing remarks and hands out the awards for Best Table Topics Speaker, Best Evaluator and Best Speaker. The meeting is then handed back over to the Presiding officer, who then calls on the Benedictor to offer some final words of inspiration.

There you have it! The basic outline for a toastmaster meeting, as you can see, there are many different roles that the toastmaster can play. Becoming a toastmaster will round you out in all of these areas. We hope to see you soon!

THE MEETING