Timber Talker Toastmaster meetings give everyone present a chance to practice their public speaking skills.

Opening

A typical Timber Talkers meeting begins with the President of the club bringing the meeting to order. Any pre-meeting announcements will be made followed by an introduction of any guests. Finally, the President introduces the Toastmaster of the day.

Toastmaster

The Toastmaster of the day is responsible for running the meeting. They decide on the theme, create the agendas and make sure that everyone scheduled to speak knows their role. They also introduce key roles, the speakers, the Table Topics Master and the General Evaluator.

The Toastmaster introduces the key roles early to let everyone know what these people will be doing during the course of the meeting. In addition to describing their roles, the Grammarian introduces the word of the day. We also have a Humor Master who tells us a joke.

Scheduled Speakers

We regularly have 2 speakers each meeting. Each speech is generally 5-7 minutes long. After each speech we are given 1 minute to write some feedback to the speaker.

Table Topics

After the prepared speeches, we have a table topics session. This gives everyone a chance to speak, especially those without a role in the meeting. The Table Topic Master introduces the topic and reminds everyone to use the word of the day to be eligible for the best table topic award (and a prize).

Evaluations

After Table Topics, the Toastmaster introduces the General Evaluator. The General Evaluator is responsible for the evaluation portion of the meeting. They will introduce the speech evaluators.

Each evaluator spends 2-3 minutes talking about their assigned speaker. They will talk about what they liked, and how they felt the speaker could have been more effective.

Following the speech evaluations, we have the Table Topic Evaluator. We believe strongly that all speaking should be evaluated. This really helps our members improve their off the cuff speaking.

The General Evaluator now evaluates the meeting as a whole. They will often comment on the role of the Toastmaster in addition to the evaluators. This gives important feedback to the Toastmaster and allows the evaluators to improve their evaluations in the future.

Finally, we wrap up with the Grammarian and Timer. After which, control is handed back to the President.

Closing

The President asks for the result of the voting for best Table Topic. After the result, the President will ask for any guest comments.

Finally, the President will wrap up the meeting with closing comments and a rundown of the agenda for next week.

Phew! All of that in 1 hour! If we have 2 guests, and all of our table topics speakers had no other role, that would be 18 people practicing public speaking in a single meeting.