Monthly Archives: March 2025
New Notes/Domino Community hosted by HCL
HCL just launched a new online community around their software. It supports blogs, events, presentations, job postings and a number of other resources to make it a central place for users, administrators, and developers to communicate with each other and with HCL.
Here is a link: https://developer.ds.hcl-software.com/
I have also added it to my Essential Notes/Domino links Page so you just need one link to get to everything: https://bit.ly/dominolinks
Toastmasters Pathways: A Case Study of Reverse Improvement?
The photo above has Bill Maher’s definition of the term Reverse Improvement. Watch the video below to hear how Bill Maher describes Reverse Improvement in colorful detail.
Do you think this term applies to what Toastmasters International has done to the education program that had successfully educated nearly 8 million people before TI converted to Base Camp and Pathways? Watch the video, (pardon the colorful language) and be sure to listen through to the end to get his conclusion. Then leave a comment to share your perspective.
Restoring the Focus on Leadership and Meeting Roles in Toastmasters
Yes, in Toastmasters, we give prepared and impromptu speeches to develop public speaking skills.
But many (most?) aspects of Toastmasters meetings are actually intended to build leadership skills.
Grammarian, Ah-Counter, & Evaluator all develop critical listening skills.
Timer, Speaker, Toastmaster, & Table Topics Master all develop time management skills.
Speech Evaluator, General Evaluator, & Grammarian all develop skills on giving feedback.
Toastmaster develops people management and meeting preparation skills.
Club officer roles give additional opportunities to learn and practice leadership skills and provide a template for running an organization.
Three ways we’re putting a focus on leadership back into our club:
- Paper signup sheet for meeting roles by the door at the meeting (to simplify the sign-up process)
- Personal meeting role record sheets (to track individual progress)
- Written evaluations for leadership roles (to provide feedback for improving)
Some clubs ask members to go online to their club website (easy-speak.org or toastmastersclubs.org) and pick a meeting role for each meeting. Other clubs have the Vice-President of Education (VPE) assign meeting roles for everyone in the website. We prefer to allow members to choose their role, but have had a problem with getting people to sign up on the website on their own. The solution we are going to try out is to have a paper sign-up sheet at the meeting.
Additionally, we’re providing a means for members to track their own progress on filling the different meeting roles. Yes, if your club uses Easy-speak.org, the VPE can pull this information from the website, but it is not easily accessed for all the members. So we’re exploring tracking this on a paper form.
Lastly, Toastmasters mantra is that the key to improving is in getting feedback after every speech or leadership activity. However, with Pathways, leadership roles are not addressed and no feedback is given for them. So we’re re-introducing giving each other written feedback when a member performs certain meeting roles to improve their leadership skills.
This is an experiment. Watch for updates on our progress!
The Notes Guy in Seattle 