Brigham City, UT: Twilight Toastmasters

Brigham City, UT
Meets 8 PM Tuesdays Eastern Time 
Attendance: 11 attendees, including 3 guests

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, as the old adage goes. For me, two of the most important things a Toastmasters club can do is to have its members arrive early at the meeting and to welcome and engage guests before the meeting. And Twilight Toastmasters in Brigham City, UT did just that in our recent visit to their club.

I appreciate the fact that Peggy responded very quickly to my inquiry to attend the other night. She also gave me the opportunity to evaluate one of the speeches that night. I strongly believe that evaluation is the hallmark of the Toastmasters program, because speakers receive feedback that is both supportive and geared towards future improvement.

I had the opportunity to evaluate Nancy and she did a good job. She teaches for a living so she's very comfortable speaking in front of people. She had great facial expressions and she has a very engaging style. I did suggest a couple of things to take the speech to the next level. First, I suggested that she step back from the camera so we could see all of her gestures. Some of her lower gestures weren't visible on the Zoom screen. Second, I suggested she put her notes to the side of or behind her computer screen, because she had to look down when glancing at her notes. That detracted from her eye contact with the audience.

The other evaluator focused more on content than on the mechanics of the speech. I firmly believe that we as evaluators need to focus less on content, because our job as evaluator is to help the speaker say what they have to say better. The speech organization is part of that, but speech mechanics are important too.

Overall I enjoyed my visit to this club.



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