Frisco, TX: Roaring Speakers Toastmasters

Frisco, TX
Meets 5 PM Sundays Eastern Time 
Attendance: 21 attendees, including 8 guests

Roaring Speakers Toastmasters had an open house when we visited there on June 21. Sadly, I cannot label their open house a success.

When it comes to having open houses for Toastmasters clubs, I realize that I'm dogmatic and opinionated.

First, in my opinion, if the club and its members don't do much to promote the open house, why bother? If you have no prospective members attend your open house, there's really no point to it. While there were at least eight guests at this open house, all but one of those seemed to be members of other Toastmasters clubs around the U.S. and the world.

Second, I firmly believe that an open house is NOT structured like a regular Toastmasters meeting. And this open house at Roaring Speakers was structured exactly like a regular meeting. 

In my opinion, an open house must be designed to engage the guests. We should be helping the guests at our open houses answer the question "What's in it for me?" or WIIFM. To me, one of the best models for a Toastmasters open house is the Rick Furbush approach to demo meetings. You can find him on YouTube.

That being said, if a club does choose to have an open house that's a regular meeting, it's important to make sure that the meeting is attractive to potential members. Roaring Speakers did do a good job of explaining all the meeting roles throughout the meeting. And Yvonne, one of the evaluators, offered great feedback by telling the speaker she evaluated that it was good that he told a personal story in his speech. She also suggested that he back away from the webcam, rehearse his speech more so he would not exceed the time for his speech, and to arrive at the meeting early to see where to best position himself on the Zoom screen. Great points, Yvonne!

Unfortunately, one of the evaluators wasn't told before the meeting that he would be evaluating a speech. Also, the Table Topics Master didn't make it clear that respondents were required to use the Word of the Day to be considered in the running for the Best Table Topics ribbon. Then one of the club officers said they wouldn't be voting for the "Best Of" ribbons, since this was an open house. All these things, in my opinion, made the meeting appear less professional and less attractive than it could have been.

One last thing: When I plan an open house at my club, I do two things. First, I schedule at least one strong speaker to show guests what they can aspire to become. Second, I allocate time in the meeting one or two members to talk about how Toastmasters has benefit them. We call these "Toast-amonials." Those two things didn't happen at this open house.






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