{"id":1091,"date":"2011-08-22T11:46:47","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T10:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=1091"},"modified":"2011-08-22T11:46:47","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T10:46:47","slug":"toastmasters-critique-from-a-scientists-point-of-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/toastmasters-critique-from-a-scientists-point-of-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Toastmasters – critique from a scientist’s point of view"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve ranted before about the strengths and weaknesses of Toastmasters. \u00c2\u00a0Probably too much, to be honest. \u00c2\u00a0I’m not saying that they’re a bad thing – just that they need to be taken with a pinch of salt (or a bucket, frankly, in some cases). \u00c2\u00a0I’ve just read a nicely analytical blog about them here<\/a> which I commend to you, gentle reader. \u00c2\u00a0I suggest you spend five minutes there before you read on here… \u00c2\u00a0I’ll wait….<\/p>\n

The issue, basically, is that Toastmasters is what it is. It’s not a training regime, it’s a hobby. \u00c2\u00a0(Read the other blog, you’ll understand.) \u00c2\u00a0My local TM describes itself on it’s website as “Cubs for adults”.<\/p>\n

In my experience, feedback is often ineffective and – sometimes – simply wrong (such as to ‘make sure you drink lots of cold water while you make your presentation’!). \u00c2\u00a0Even when it’s effective it’s inefficient, because a professional trainer can give you faster progress. \u00c2\u00a0I don’t know how standardised the fees are, but I’ve just seen a website for a TM in London, citing costs of \u00c2\u00a325 to join and \u00c2\u00a360\/year after that. \u00c2\u00a0That means your first year costs you \u00c2\u00a385. Meeting bi-monthly with the typical 20-40 members means you’ll not exactly get a lot of chances to deliver presentations and receive feedback (assuming the feedback is worthwhile in the first place) so I’m pretty sure you’ll not only make faster progress with a professional course but probably cheaper progress too, in the long run.<\/p>\n

I could be wrong, of course, as all of this is based on assumptions…. but at the very least the Jury is still out, for me at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve ranted before about the strengths and weaknesses of Toastmasters. \u00c2\u00a0Probably too much, to be honest. \u00c2\u00a0I’m not saying that they’re a bad thing – just that they need to be taken with a pinch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}