Five pros and five cons of joining Toastmasters International

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Castanet on July 22, 2024 there is a balanced article by Wade Paterson titled The pros and cons of Toastmasters. It is accompanied by a 13–1/ 2 minute YouTube video titled BEST and WORST Things About TOASTMASTERS. Wade is from Kelowna in southeast British Columbia and has been a Toastmasters member for a decade.

 

His five pros are:

 

1] The constant practice

2] Constructive feedback

3] Reduction of speaking anxiety

4] Affordable cost

5] Leadership and development opportunities

 

His five cons are:    

 

1} You can get too comfortable

2} Limitations/formalities

3} Inconsistent feedback

4} It’s not free

5} The repetitiveness

 

The cost is indeed quite affordable. International dues are just U.S. $10 per month. Semi-annual international dues are U.S. $60, with a new member fee of U.S. $20. There also possibly are club dues to cover items like supplies and rental of a venue.   

 

Under You can get too comfortable, at 12:10 in the video Wade says: 

 

“We know that Toastmasters is always five to seven minutes.”

 

That is not quite true. At Level 4 in the Pathways educational program there is an elective project titled Question-And-Answer Session (Item 8413) where the speech and the question-and-answer session together must take 15 to 20 minutes.

 

And at Level 5 there is a project titled Prepare to Speak Professionally (Item 8509) that calls for an 18-to-22-minute keynote-style speech. It is required in the Presentation Mastery path, and is an elective in the other ten paths.

 

Lessons in storytelling from Jon Favreau - Barack Obama’s speechwriter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three lessons are described by Jonathan Edward Favreau in his BKB lecture given in Amsterdam on September 14, 2014:

 

“Now, when I first started speechwriting, I would always start by asking myself, ‘What’s the clever line? What’s the snappy soundbite? What’s the most unique, catchy, memorable thing I can write?’

 

The President taught me that really, those are the wrong questions to ask, and trying too hard to answer them can produce writing that sounds forced, artificial, and too cute by half. If you’re only focused on lines and soundbites, you can easily miss the forest for the trees.

 

The correct first question to ask is, ‘What’s the story I’m trying to tell?’ I’m not talking about the interesting anecdotes we often use to humanize a speech – though those are important too. I’m talking about knowing your central theme and core message. I’m talking about building a speech with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Whether you’re into outlines or not – and I’m not – you should always be able to sum up your entire speech in a few very conversational sentences before you start writing it. And later, if you find yourself adding words that don’t directly build on that initial, central summary, go ahead and delete them.

 

So that’s the first lesson I learned from the President – the importance of telling a short, simple, compelling story about what you want to say.

 

The second valuable lesson I learned from the President was about the importance of honesty and authenticity in writing and communications.

 

….And this brings me to the final major lesson I learned from the President – storytelling is fundamentally about maintaining your idealism.”   

 

Another five topic headings are described by Steve Seager in an excellent article at Medium on June 1, 2017 titled How to Become a Better Storyteller: Tips from Obama’s Speechwriter, Unpacked. They also are in a .pdf at with the same title at Storywise:

 

Outcome first, words last

Structure a logical argument

Test your argument from your audience’s point of view

Use their language, not yours

And so, to Storytelling

 

There is a 2021 HBO documentary series titled Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union. For it there is a long interview of Jon Favreau with the Kunhardt Film Foundation, that can be read here as a 29-page .pdf file.

 

An image of a man with a laptop computer was adapted from Openclipart.

 

Celebrating 2,700 blog posts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the beginning of July I passed a milestone of having made 2,700 posts on this blog. The graphic shown above has nine groups of 300 stars, arranged in a 20 x 15 pattern. Back on July 12, 2023 I had blogged about Celebrating having published 2500 blog posts.

 

The Top Five posts of all time now are:

 

23,600 views - October 27, 2009: The 14 Worst Human Fears inthe 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data come from?

 

22,000 views - July 5, 2009: Two types of speech outlines:speaking and preparation

 

15,900 views - February 6, 2019: Is flap-chart a racist term?

 

8,600 views - December 29, 2011: How can you easily draw dotted chalk lines on a blackboard?

 

6,370 views - December 11, 2009: Does homeopathic Argentum nitricum reduce anxiety?

 

Curiously three of them have come from way back in 2009.

 

Being a tour guide can make you a better speaker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In her The Master Communicator Blog on July 15, 2024 Rosemary Ravinal has a post titled How tour guiding can make you a better speaker. She says to do a half-dozen things:

 

Tell unforgettable stories

Delight diverse audiences

Build confidence

Improve non-verbal communication

Find your unique style

Handle questions with grace

 

An article by Karen Friedman on January 3, 2024 titled What business communicators can learn from tour guides discussed the topics of having a connection, being memorable, being engaging, using differentiation and creating trust.

 

There also is another article about tour guides by Barnaby Davies on pages 22 to 24 in the December 2018 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Entertaining Travelers Around the World.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do these three items have in common? They all ignore the broader jargon for describing a tour guide. Back on December 19, 2010 I blogged about Heritage interpretation and public speaking. Interpreters are people who explain natural or cultural resources to visitors at places like parks, nature centers, museums, zoos, botanical gardens, aquariums, and tour companies. As shown above via a Venn diagram, a tour guide is at the intersection of public speaking and heritage interpretation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you search under heritage interpretation, you will find there are organizations with much useful information. In the U.S. there is the National Association for Interpretation (NAI), which publishes two magazines, Legacy and the Journal of Interpretation Research. Most articles and issues are at their web site and for members only. There is a long article by Marc J. Stern and Robert B. Powell in the Journal of Interpretation Research for 2013 (Volume 18, number 2 pages 9 to 44) titled What leads to better visitor outcomes in live interpretation? For it they surveyed 3,603 visitors from 312 live interpretive programs at U. S. National Parks. As shown above, Figure 1 describes fifteen best practices.

 

Interpretation Canada (IC) has an eighty-page 2015 book titled The Interpreter’s Big Book of Disasters. Their IC blog has a post by Munju Ravindra on June 12, 2019 titled IC Blog: Lessons from the Interpreter’s Book of Disasters: Intertidal Stranding. On July 3, 2024 I blogged about how A public speaker can tell us a story about being in a seemingly dangerous place. But a heritage interpreter can actually take us there.

 

Interpret Europe has a forty-page ebook by Thorsten Ludwig titled The Interpretive Guide – Sharing Heritage with People (2nd edition, 2015).

 

An image showing a tour guide and wall painting came from 3DeyeNET at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Juliana Turchetti crashed and died while fighting a Montana wildland fire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 9, 2020 I blogged about how Fighting wildfires from the air is dangerous. An article by Kelly Anderson at Fire Aviation on July 11, 2024 titled SEAT crashes in Montana reservoir described how a single engine air tanker (SEAT) flown by Brazilian pilot Juliana Turchetti, age 45, crashed on July 10, 2024 near Helena.

 

As shown above, she was flying an Air Tractor AT-802F FireBoss, which is a twin-float water bomber plane that can scoop water from a lake. Her LinkedIn page shows her in a FireBoss. There is another article by Jackie Coffin at Yellowstone Public Radio on July 11, 2024 titled Coroner identifies FireBoss pilot killed fighting Horse Gulch Fire.

 

The image of a FireBoss was adapted from this one by Agesch at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Making fine distinctions: Using the right word versus the almost-right word

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Twain once said:

 

“The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is really a large matter - it’s the difference between the lightning-bug & the lightning.”

 

At the Boise Public Library I got an excellent, little, two-hundred page, 2024 book by Eli Burnstein titled Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning. It has a long subtitle, An Assorted Synonymy & Encyclopedia of Commonly Confused Objects, Ideas & Words, Distinguished with the Aid of illustrations [line drawings by Liana Finck]. I’m enjoying learning about those distinctions.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above via my illustration, page 179 distinguishes between poisonous and venomous, which also is shown on the cover, as seen in an excerpt at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. And page 16 distinguishes between ethics and morality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the distinctions are best shown via Venn diagrams, like page 173 where canapes are a subset of hors d’oeuvres, and on page 32 comparing how other types of numbers fit inside real numbers.

 

Images of canapes, hors d’oeuvres, and a death cap mushroom came from Wikimedia Commons. The snake was adapted from an image at Openclipart. From Andrew Comstock’s 1846 book, A System of Elocution, I got the images for ethics (page 88 #32) and morality (page 90 #43).  

 

Where were you on September 16, 1963, when The Outer Limits first was shown on television?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will never forget precisely where I was. My four siblings and I were sitting in our TV room, next to the kitchen. The front had our 17” 1950 black-and-white television set, while the back had a long sleeper sofa. The television picture had started to flutter and roll vertically, as usual for after about ten minutes.

 

One of my brothers got up from the sofa and started walking over to the set to fix it. Then he got startled, and jumped straight up into the air when he heard the Control Voice first begin reciting the following introductory message for The Outer Limits:

 

"There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to - The Outer Limits.”

 

The best-known episode was Demon with a Glass Hand, which you can watch here on YouTube.

 

Over the Fourth of July holiday a local TV station had a Twilight Zone marathon, which reminded me of The Outer Limits.

 

The TV set image came from Openclipart.