PR for speaking clubs in Toastmasters International

 |Mentors can look for members.

Hold a monthly party open to all members before or after the committee meeting, best afterwards?

Meet guests in advance of the meeting for coffee and show them the venue and meet up with a couple more committee members.

At the meeting pair each guest with a buddy.

Walk through the venue and check any visitor can find you easily with direction signs, or a map. You can do a video of yourself walking to the venue door from nearest station.

Link up to professionals on LinkedIn. 

PR can write up all events such as contest, members gaining ribbons. on Facebook and other media.

Google your club and see what people find.

Have new PR every new week.

Give newcomers a role and a comittee role.

Have each committee member introduce their role and what they can do for members and guests and meetings.

Make a photo from a club picture and add an AI picture of a scared guest. Use this in Canva to create a poster or leaflet.

Toastmasters shows Pr pictures of young professional business people at a board room desk in front of a whiteboard. Your club could be  retired people, middle aged, or a gavel club for students. Members could be all white, all black, all Indian all Chinese, all Muslim, all Christian, all Israeli. On stage at contests, wearing sarees, judges with clipboards, online with children and cats. Some clubs are formal in hotels. Others are fun in fancy dress.

Get potential members involved in roles, or committee roles. Get them to shadow a committee member and give a speech on that. 

Get a committee member to give a speech on committee roles.

The breakout room leader should ask each person to share verbally or in writing in a chat their best success, and the thing they need help with. Plus any comment on any other person's ideas.

PR can be for the TM brand, the local club, to help a lonely, shy individual. Maybe they want to hear training, or get free tea and biscuits. Speak on radio and TV, in newspapers, magazines.

Interview guest at first meeting, talking about how shy they feel, and compare that at the end of the year to show their progress.

Table Topic (impromptu speech) on anger, evaluated

 At Harrovians Gill gave a one hour workshop on evaluating.

Several of us had the opportunity to to a table topic, an impromptu speech for 3 minutes, then another volunteer evaluated.

The question I had to answer was, 

When was the last time you were angry?

I opened

Opening

I can't remember the last time I was angry. I think it must have been when I was about four years old.

That got a laugh.

The body of my speech was

Anger

I don't get angry. I don't cry. The last time I cried was when my parents died. After that I never bothered getting angry and crying over trivia. 

People write comments on newspaper articles, 'when I read about so and so happened, I cried'. 

Crying Over The News

Crying over strangers? What a waste of a day, a life. If you cry all the time about things which happened to other people miles away, there are several million people in your own country and the world, You'd be crying all the time about people you don't know and never met.

That's who I don't cry.

 I don't get so angry that I cry, or make somebody else angry or cry. 

What if the angry person is somebody you know, your boss? 

I read that somebody got angry and made staff cry. Don't get angry and make others cry. Don't cry if others get angry.

People get upset over trivial things. Parking spaces.

Anger Over Parking Spaces

Direct your anger at the council who don't provide enough parking spaces.

You find one, or you don't. Crying doesn't help.

Crying Over Speeches

Just after my father died I went to a |Toastmasters meeting where visitors were asked to speak on a table topic, for 2 minutes. A newcomer was asked a question about football. She knew nothing about football and burst into tears. I thought, my father just died, I am not crying. She is crying because she could not answer about football, about which she knows nothing, and cares nothing, in front people she doesn't know who don't know her. 

How silly to cry.

Here's my Call To Inaction

My advice to you is, don't cry, and don't angry. 

But if you do get angry or cry, I won't cry, and I won't get angry. 

I can't remember the last time I got angry.

----

Verdicts

Evaluator 1

The evaluator commented on the fact that

1  I launched straight into the subject. 

2 I used humour.

3 I told a personal story.

4 It related to everybody.

Evaluator 2

Angela repeated and word AND. 

(I cut the word and out of my written version here.)

Evaluator 3

I told my husband this when I got home. He laughed at the start. 

He asked me, 'Did you win the ribbon for the best table topic?'

'No,' I answered. 'There was no voting.'

He smiled, 'Never mind. If there had been a vote, you would have won.'

***

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Learn Lovely Languages - Hello, Hello Day (Nov 21) and Greetings

Here are some greetings you may know, ow want to know, so you can use them or at least recognize them. On world hello day, you are asked to greet people in ten languages. 

Hello in Other Languages

1 English/American Hello, Hi

Hello is also used as a greeting in Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa. 

Many countries use hello on the phone, although they say another word as a greeting.

bonjiorno

Happy Birthday

 Joyeux anniversaire. Happy anniversary or happy birthday in French.

Feliz cumpleaños in Spanish.

Welcome

'Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome,' that's what they song in the film Cabaret.

How many of you speak French or understand a little French?

Hello and welcome, or as the French would say, bon soir, good evening.

Goodbye

Adios. Arrivaderci. Aug Wiedersehen. Sayonara.

You sometimes hear people say,

'Learning languages is a waste of time and money. Everybody speaks English.'

1 Knowing other languages is not a waste of time. On Euston station in the year 2000 the English language announcement told us to evacuate the station. I was able to use French to tell a bilingual Spanish girl who also spoke French with her friends, Spanish speaking tourists, who came off the downwards escalator that they should leave.

2 Learning another language need not waste money. You can do it for free on duolingo.com

3 Not everybody speaks English. If they do, why are the UK government, and local government, the NHS (National Health Service) and the police spending so much on translating documents?

Useful Websites on Hello, Hello Day and Greetings

duolingo.com

https://worldhelloday.org/

https://www.wikihow.com/Say-Happy-Birthday-in-Spanish

Translation Costs

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2904814/Shock-figures-reveal-huge-sums-spent-translators-police-councils-hospitals.html

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LILT polyglot languages club meeting Sunday 11 th Feb 2024

Rehearsal of Italian on Friday Feb 9th 

Those attending  were Angela, Carolyn of Advancity, Mike Ma previously of BHA, Medhavi of Harrovians in London, and Surya, a student who works in customer service. The name Medhavi is Sanskrit for intelligent.

Pronunciation

Carolyn told us her mother's side of the family are from India. She said that if Medhavi pronounced her name the Indian way it would be Madhavi.

I opened with Bongiorno, good day in Italian. Carolyn gave the German. 

When Mike joined I said the Chinese greeting, Ni hao. 

Mike told us the Korean greeting, and said the only Korean words he knows are hello, goodby and thankyou. His English is much imporoved with a good command of vocabulary as well as general fluency.

Mike likes man-made noodles (we say hand-made noodles) not made by machine but by man power. Machine noodles taste different. 

Hot pot restaurant. Hai da Lo. 

I asked, 'How to you eat noodles with chopsticks?'

Medhavi answered, 'You roll the chopsticks and blow on them to cool the food, or ask for a fork ,' (if a Westerner). 

Mike said, 'stick chop', meaning chopsticks.

Chinese noodles are made white with white flour.  or yellow. Add fishballs.

TABLE TOPICS

I was table topics master, with Carolyn to evaluate.

I asked, 'What is your favourite Italian food or drink?'

Carolyn asked me to speak about Italian wine.

I mentioned Prosecco. 

She asked about Chianti. I mentioned in a straw flask.

I said Asti was sparkling, Asti Spumante from the Sixties, when sparkling wine was drunk. For example, Babycham in the UK. It was drink from wide sundae glasses, before we moved to Champagne flutes. Your nose can't get in the flute.

Table Topics

What is your favourite pasta?

Medhavi said, lasagne. Vegetarian. (She is vegan.)

You put the pasta in boiling water. Use a paper towl to dry it out. Add shredded cheese and red sauce. (Tomato sauce.)

I added a language tip. In English we don't say a bit of salt but a pinch of salt.

Carolyn said, 'My favourite pasta is canneloni with cream and cheese'.

Mike enjoys Chinese noodle dishes from a Chinese shop. Steamboat you have hot water or soup, and add your own meat or vegetables.

Surya said his favourite Italian food is pizza. Cheesy and sticky. With cheese or chicken on top.

Carolyn suggested, 'Try pineapple, Hawaian pizza, and deep crust pizza from Pizza Hut has cheese isnide the thick tubular crust.

Later, Surya said, 'How can I eat dog meat! . 

Mike said, 'Dog meat was now banned in Korea.'

MY SPEECH ON ITALIAN

Title

Where To Speak Italian and How to learn it

................................... 

Carolyn taught us that arigato, Japanese for thank you sounds like Italian.

I was asked, 'How do you learn the Italian pronunciation, if you are using Duolingo?'

Membership

Surya is 23, from Calcutta, not a toastmaster member. He thought the price for a year, plus the newcomer joining fee, was high. 

I suggested, 'You could ask for a 6 month fee as a gift for a birthday or Xmas.' 

He said, 'Students should get a discount.' 

(This is the second potential member who was deterred by the price. LILT is currently a branch of Advancity. However, if we do not get the needed 20 members by June, I shall have to transfer to Agora, who rquire only 8 members. Easier to achieve. And no fee.

Speak About What You Fancy, or Fulfil A Pathways Project?

Open Ended Speech Topics

In Toastmasters, if you haven't got the time to prepare a speech, you can volunteer to do a table topic. (A two minute impromptu speech.)

 Some of the Pathways projects are even more open ended. For example, the project on Researching and Presenting. Research whatever takes your fancy.

At one point, I tried doing a topic I liked and picking my next project in a Pathway. However, the Judger types (on Myers Briggs personality typing) would start by saying that I had not met the objectives of the project. 

In retrospect, they were right. If you are asked a question in an English exam about Romeo and Juliet, you cannot write about King Lear.

Sales and Customers 

If you are in business and the customer asks you for something, you have to follow the brief. If a customer wants to buy a dishwasher, you cannot sell a tumble drier.

Advertising Copy

 I worked in advertising as a copywriter. If Rolls Royce want an advertisement on their latest car, you have to sell that, not an advertisement on playing tennis.

Writing Speeches For A Living

If you are asked for a wedding speech, you cannot write a funeral speech. If you are asked to write a speech for the conservative party leader, you cannot write a speech for the Green Party.

Should the mentor be the evaluator?

 Having the mentor as evaluator saves the VPE effort. It ensures the mentor can see that the evaluation is posted in the mentee's Pathways. 

However, a second opinion is always helpful. Best of all is to get all members to send comments in the chat. Make it a requirement, like voting, that you need half a dozen comments before proceeding to the next speaker.

HPL Follow up on learncool April 30

Thurs 30 April

FAQ -

1 Start with how to login.
Q  Do I need a password?
In zoom, yes. But in some recurring meetings you can enter your email, join with facebook, automatically log in. Often you then need to wait for the host to admit you and a sign will say so.
If you can't log in, maybe you have two zoom windows open, one still open from a previous meeting. Shut them both and log in again.

2 Is my information secure on this site?

3 Does it matter if I am on a phone instead of a laptop?

4 I have logged in but nothing is happening.
This is security, for zoom and everywhere. to prevent strangers joining in, the host has to admit you first and they may be busy advising somebody who is already in the meeting room.

5 How to join the meeting?
A In learncool.sg join by clicking on conference.

6 Q Why is my face hidden?
A You have covered the lens on your laptop.

7 How can I hide my face? (I am eating and then need to reapply my lipstick and comb my hair.)
Now, how can I show my face?

8 I can hear but not see anybody.
Look for a microphone with a oblique line or the word mute, which changes to unmute.

9 I see everybody except myself. Where am I?
It's a large meeting and there are two pages of pictures, otherwise you would all be tiny. Click on the arrows to right and left, or up and down if pictures are in a column, or 1 and 2 or higher numbers for the different pages.

10  See The Speaker
How can I see the speaker, large?
At the top or bottom of the screen is a series of squares representing how many screens are shown. it could be one, two, four or multiple. It might say, all or speaker view. change the view to see everybody or one person, the speaker or host or the speaker at that moment.

11 Timer - See
How to see the timer?
Scroll through the 2 or more pages showing the small screens of people. Look for the person labelled timer. Remind them to show the colour cards. Pin their screen by clicking on three dots top right of the miniature oblong screen. If you are the Toastmaster of the day or contest chair, ask the speaker if they can see the timer before they start speaking.

12 Timer - Be
Help. I am timer. How to show the timer?
Use your mobile phone to time. That's why it is easier to use your laptop or ipad for the conferencing, so you can use your phone to look things up on Google in Wikipedia, or show the timer.

13 Quit
How to leave the meeting? in learncool.sg, click on the red phone, like in whatsapp where  you click on the red phone to end the phone call.

14 Photo Taking
Finally, where can I see the group photo? On Facebook on the BHA page, on Angela's Facebook page, in our WhatsApp group or on Learncool.sg BHA wall.

15 Selfie?
How can take a selfie? Screen shot. Find the PrtSc key on your keyboard. It saves one

Finally, where can I see the group photo? On Facebook on the BHA page, on Angela's Facebook page, in our WhatsApp group or on Learncool.sg BHA wall.
icture of the screen to your clipboard. You must immediately paste it somewhere else of it will be overwritten by the next thing you copy or save.

Update
My plan is to produce a leaflet to show all controls, what to do to mute, unmute, show video and change user name.

And chat.

Useful websites
TI
Facebook BHA

Author
Angela Lansbury, author and trainer.