Toastmasters

I went to a Toastmaster's meeting in November 2008 at UCLA to find out more about the organization. Specifically, I want to learn how to persuade and interest people in hearing my ideas. Toastmaster's has a cool curriculum which builds speaker's skill sets and books to help them reach goals. Plus, you can obtain secondary benefits of building some leadership skills as you volunteer with them in various capacities. And, the elephant in the room, perhaps, is developing and exploiting your contacts to further your career. My goal is to get people interested in my bike rides and get people to listen to my ideas.

Some people are able to engage others and others are likely to follow and join them based upon the personality of the organizer. I am terrible at this. At a family reunion, for example, I spent a lot of time before hand to organize games. I brought them along but my cousin Beth took charge of the events, and, the point of this, people automatically deferred to her, without a second thought or deference to me. Weird. Personally, I prefer working by myself. I don't want to depend on anyone especially since most group work I do, I wind up doing the majority of it myself or wind up feeling angry at the others who flake. Although I am gregarious and social, I am in situations which I am not in a group. You would think that Toastmaster's could help such a "misanthrope" as me.

The first speech I heard was from this guy Larry who told us about his boring trip to Florida. He sweated profusely during his speech which was focused on using vocal inflection to demonstrate "excitedness." He would say things like "it was GREAT that I met with colleagues..." or "it was so AMAZING to see the exhibit..." Anyways, he was prepared and though I didn't learn anything, he got some practice in and to build up his speaking skills.

I came away from the meeting thinking that Toastmaster's is really for people who are totally shy and afraid of speaking in front of anyone. Most of the speeches had the sense of being "inflated" and "too happy" and too self-congratulatory to each member. It was too "feel good" and I think, a bit fake in their transparent efforts to build "self-confidence" in public speaking. It works for people and I think it's a great organization. However, I left feeling unimpressed.

The thing that really bothered me was that the members did not walk around or even greet the four new visitors to their meeting. Oh, sorry, one did and it was so obvious to me that he shook her hand because she was really cute. Otherwise, the other "ugly" ones didn't even get a greeting. You would think that they would remember when they came to their first meeting. I expected them to be welcoming and friendly and they were not. I guess their "self-confidence" is highly correlated to their unfriendliness.

Last week, while I was walking across the street at work, I saw Larry, the guy from Toastmasters!! He five or six feet in front of me. What are the odds of this? I yelled out his name, twice. He didn't even look over his shoulder. He ignored me. And he wasn't wearing head phones. Now, I am even more unimpressed by them. Now, here's the really "small world" weird synchronicity: Larry appeared at a holiday party I was invited to! WTF? I did not have the opportunity to talk to him and I felt if I did, he would start sweating profusely and that would have been embarrassing!

I found other meetings in the area but they are not as convenient for me nor do I think I fall in the category of being shy. I don't think I could stand the way they patronize each other on how great that speech was and how the president of that meeting gave lavish praise on one of the members who barely spoke.

So, fuck toastmasters.