TOPIC:

I am training our club on how to use the speech introduction feature. However, most members don't know (don't want to learn) how to log in. I am super tech savvy, but my club isn't. I suspect other clubs are similar. People only learn what they have to, and teaching them is difficult. They won't want to learn how to log in, to print the speech introduction, when they are the toastmaster role.

Is there a way for a club (Probably VP-Education) to email the speech introduction to the Toastmaster? Then they can choose to either print it from their computer, or read it from their computer. This would make sense, in the world of hybrid virtual meetings.

I think this feature would be helpful/utilized.

Thanks in advance.

Cory Lowe

The Toastmaster of the day can can see and print the agenda and intros.

Yes using your browser print to pdf function you can print the adenda and intros as pdf and email them. It would be better to teach your members how to use the website. My 90 year old mother can use FTH, I am sure your members can as well\ with proper instruction.

The VPE could print the introductions report to PDF, or print to printer but "cancel" before actually printing. Some (most?) browsers leave the content on screen, then copy/paste the content to a word-processor. That can be emailed to the Toastmaster.

Having to hunt for an email sounds like more work than having the agenda open to read online

How are the speakers providing their introductions?

We really haven't been using introductions.

I recently started having the speakers email me their introductions, and then I add them, when I create the agenda. We aren't using them though, at the moment.

It is certainly your club's prerogative to want to email speech introductions to the meeting Toastmaster. (Although I do tend to agree that some training for your club would likely help--you could get credit for that if you did it as a speech project.)

In any case, I am having a hard time figuring out what FTH's role would be if we added something like this. If you are suggesting that members would email the Toastmaster from the website, then you are still left with the issue of training them to use the website.

If you are suggesting that we somehow provide a forwarding email address for the Toastmaster (e.g.
tm-#####@toastmastersclubs.org or similar) that is accessible outside the website (e.g. via an emailed agenda), then you are still left with the pre-requisite that the member can find the relevant email and knows what to do with the link. Any kind of email feature is going to beg the question of whether adding it to FTH would provide any significant value beyond just emailing the person directly--the reason for this is that email specific features frequently tend to be very "flakey" and not work for everyone. (it is just a problem with email in general)

I am not suggesting that we would never do something like this since one of the basic intentions of FTH is to improve communications. However, this needs some more thought on what the real value proposition is and what the best implementation and usage would be. Moreover, since we seldom do feature adds just to meet the needs of one club, you need to rethink this and reframe it in terms of how it would be beneficial to clubs beyond just your own.

I think we should leave this as an Improvement Suggestion that others can comment on... maybe they can help you make your case a bit better. (Please post Improvement Suggestions in that forum section in the future.) I do review those periodically to look for where I should invest some of my time on development.

OK,

Thanks SteveTheTechie.

I did not realize that the Speech Introductions were not visible to everyone.  I became the FTH admin shortly after joining my club, so I had just assumed that everyone saw the Introductions. I find that it is really helpful to have the Introductions visible. I recently joined another club and I wondered why my Evaluator could not see my Introduction that I had so carefully prepared to make it easy on him.
We have Evaluators introduce the speech and the Toastmaster introduce the Speaker -- "Speaker Name, Speech Title, Speech TItle, Speaker Name" -- just like in contests. My third club uses Easy-Speak and Introductions are visible to members.
As far as saving paper -- we sure save a lot of paper by being online with ZOOM -- I know because I was the one who printed the Agendas and brought them to in-person meetings --  for the last 9 years until we started meeting with ZOOM in March 2020.  I used to print the agenda double-sided and shrink the pages to make it all fit on a single-sheet of double-sided paper.  I was also the one who recycled the old agendas.
It would be terrific to have the Introductions visible to all.  [By the way, I prefer FTH to Easy-Speak -- and I am the VPE for both clubs.]

There many reasons why they are not viewable to everyone.
What kink of surprise would there be if everyone need the intro before the speaker was ready to present.
The Speaker should be talking to their evaluator before the speech on what they want the evaluator to focus on\, evaluator should hear the intro at the same time as everyone else, it should be part of the evaluation.