Saturday, February 24, 2018

Were you recently visited by the Table Topics Bunny?




























Where do Table Topics Questions come from? One answer is that each year the Table Topics Bunny (TTB) hops down the chimney and leaves a bushel basket of them for good little Toastmasters. The TTB does this on February 22nd - the birthday for the founder, Ralph W. Smedley.

If you didn’t get a basket on Thursday it was probably because the TTB won’t visit unless you already believe in him. He’s like the Great Pumpkin. Or, perhaps he’s just a tall tale from a decade ago.

So you have to make up your own questions, or borrow them from someone else. I’ve discussed six dozen in three recent blog posts. On January 27, 2018 I blogged about 25 Questions for Table Topics from Claire Lew. On February 12, 2018 I blogged about Falling in love and Table Topics questions – the famous 36 Questions. On February 14, 2018 I blogged about 11 Table Topics questions from the 2017 book Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferriss.

Claire Lew’s article was titled The 25 most popular icebreaker questions based on four years of data. When you search for other questions, remember to use the phrase “icebreaker questions” to broaden your search beyond Toastmasters. You will find an October 24, 2016 article by Carly Sims at MuseumHack that lists a hundred titled The only list of icebreaker questions you’ll ever need. There also is a January 5, 2015 article at Icebreaker Ideas titled 600+ Icebreaker Questions – Biggest List EVER!

The TTB is a mash-up of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. His image is a PowerPoint creation using two OpenClipart images - one of a rabbit-with-eggs and another of papers.   

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