As you know I have been working on the best way to do an agenda. I think I have it nailed down. While this is really the role of the VP of Education, Julie and I have been work sharing so that we can accomplish the most tasks possible. As you are aware there are a lot of things that need to be looked after in a new club.

Managing the Agenda Roles:

In reality Managing the Agenda roles is one of the most important tasks in the club for a number of reasons. A well run agenda ensures a quality meeting. It helps the Executive understand their members goals better. It allows for future planning of everything including contests. The role of VP of Education is the heaviest role on the Executive Committee. Therefore it requires assistance. For now I am helping out on that by handling the schedule and agenda.

In the beginning creating the agenda was a huge task. The cumbersome way was necessary because we had so many new to toastmasters members and we were trying to innovate our own way of conducting our meetings. We also wanted our members to be happy with their roles. I think that in spite of the few fumbles, over all we have awesome meetings. No doubt we will continue to improve.

Rotating Roles:

The fact that we have awesome members means that we will continue to blossom. Now that we all have some club meeting experiences under our belt, we can now move to rotating roles so that everyone gets a chance at every position. Having said that, when a new member joins, we need to put them in the easier roles until they are up to speed and that is pretty easy as there is a sweet spot to insert their name into the role rotation. That gives the six weeks of easy roles. There are 18 roles, including speakers and evaluators. Currently there are 4 more people than roles, so they get listed as “Back up” if anyone can not make their role, then the backups step in. So anyone listed as a backup can step in. It is a great way to get in extra speeched. I have been personally using that to do educational speeches for the club. With this process in hand, what is important is that if someone can not make their meeting, to let me know as soon as possible so that I can fill the position and notify the next backup person that they now have a role. This method is far less work than other ways of handling missed meetings and it allows me to ensure we have a solid agenda.
Please review the attached spreadsheet and let me know of any errors or omissions. Let me know ASAP if you can not make any of the meetings or if you have a challenge with any specific role on any specific date.

The update on the Charter is that we are hung up in Toastmaster International processing, and will not be approved until October. It does not make any real difference because we are up an operating anyway.

Pathways Educational Session:

We have scheduled Tony Nelson DTM to do a Pathways Educational Session on Wed. Oct 2. This will help members to understand the Pathways program. Interestingly TI is making a lot of ongoing improvements. (YEA!!!!) In the meantime please keep track of your speeches and evaluations. (I am also tracking it).

Upon request, I will be doing an educational speech on “How to create a speech in 15 minutes. This will be a demo. I will be asking for a non believer that this can work for them, to help me with this, live and in action during the session.

Julie is doing a lot of work on educational material, including ordering the Legacy Program manuals, for our library.

We are also are working to initiate the member mentoring process.

For now your club executives are meeting weekly to get things organized. Their support is greatly appreciated.

I will send out this weeks meeting agenda later, but that is not urgent because everyone’s roles are indicated on the attached schedule.

Have an awesome weekend. I am looking forward to next Wednesday.

Dan