At the all-hands meeting in Washington DC Susan attended last week, one of the directives everyone was given was to improve their public speaking skills. Susan’s a good (actually, great) public speaker, but she (like me) thinks (A) there is always room for improvement, and (B) by learning better public speaking skills, she might be able to pass those skills on to her subordinates and co-workers. After discovering that there are weekly Toastmaster meetings at the FAA, Susan asked me if I would be interested in attending a meeting with her. I said sure, of course.

The meeting was different than I had imagined it. Our first meeting had a pretty low turnout with only four others showing up. I spent a lot of the meeting trying to figure out all the formalities; for example, whenever people spoke there were specific ways they addressed their fellow Toastmasters. Two of the members gave speeches as a third timed (and later critiqued) them. It was mentioned that one person’s job was to count all the “filler words” people used (“er”, “um”, “uh”, etc) which made me really nervous; that’s one of my worst habits when it comes to public speaking and something I know I need to improve on.

Susan and I were asked to introduce ourselves which was no big deal, and then somehow I got elected “Jokemaster”, probably because I kept asking where the toast was. It’s the Jokemaster’s job to tell a joke in front of the group. We’re not even members, and ten minutes into our first meeting I’m telling jokes! I couldn’t think of a clean one so instead I recalled a funny story about eating in a restaurant with the kids last week. People laughed so I guess it was okay. In the future I’ll be sure to have a joke or two on hand (surely there’s a phone app for that …).

One part of the meeting consists of extemporaneous speaking. One of the members picks a topic (ours was “pirates”) and then asks each member a question about the word. The questions I heard were, “How is the battle against pirates in Somalia going?”, “Talk about computer piracy,” and “Pirates are a common Halloween costume — talk about an old Halloween costume of yours.” Before long I was participating again. I was asked, “Pirates hang out on the ocean, so talk about the last time you were on the ocean.” That’s an easy one since we just got back from Cozumel. I started talking about our first trip to the Bahamas, and was just getting ready to start talking about Cozumel when I learned that there was a two minute time limit per question. Have they not met me?

I didn’t get all the details about joining but it seems like a worthwhile thing to do. I was literally horrified at the way I sounded at Defcon. I did better at Notacon after having a couple of pre-Rum and Cokes, which unfortunately isn’t always an option. If I can eliminate that stupid nervous laugh I do while publicly speaking and trim a few “ums” and “ers” out of there as well, it’ll be worth attending.