Visiting Others

I recently had the opportunity to visit another Toastmasters Club while on travel and I found it worthwhile and enjoyable.

I was in Downtown Tampa attending a conference for my office, one where I would have to present to a crowd of about 150. Before I left, I visited the toastmasters.org website to find a club. I searched by the zip code of my hotel and a list of the about 30 clubs came back. The first club on the list turned out to meet only two blocks from the hotel during lunch.

I called the club contact when I was certain I could break free from the conference. The meeting was still on and there were no hoops to jump through for me to attend.

The Tampa Downtowners Club welcomed me immediately-- and put me on the agenda as grammarian and ah-counter. I was als called upon to address a Table Topics question.

The meeting was fun. There were two excellent speakers, including one completing his Advanced Communicator Bronze. The large audience included a good mix of members and guests.

What I most enjoyed, though, was seeing how a different club can follow the same basic program, but with their own unique identity attached. For example, the TMOD, early in the meeting, identified each meeting role and called upon the member to describe their roles or read a speaker's speech objectives. Other differences came across, but this one struck me as unique.

I learned something, and made a few new friends during that visit. It was something that I plan to do again. In fact, I'm traveling soon to Raleigh-Durham and I've already made a list of clubs in the area.