- the very simple fact that I can not choose to allow my username to be saved to the system
- today I found out that I have to log into the club and district management sections. They have hidden the reports again.
- no RSS feeds to know when they update news and announcements
- the obvious push for membership, but no way for members to make connections and exchange ideas easily. It may be out of date, but a group of forums would be a good start
- Do you want to add your pictures? Well, you have to email them to someone rather than just upload them yourself to share with other members.
- The site architecture- the organization of it makes me want to cry. How can anyone expect to find anything of value?
- Search you ask? Almost everything that comes back is for the store. It is possible to create a search that removes the store from the results or a search just for the store. Also, it could be that there is so little content on the site that the only results can be the store.
- I know they keep this on record so why doesn't me profile tell me what manuals and modules I have done.
- Why is there no blog for our international leaders?
- There is a wiki, but shouldn't TMI have their own knowledge base for us to find and contribute too?
- Podcasts- why are there aren't any of educational sessions, sections of meetings, comments from international leaders?
- Videos- see above.
I know these things are out there, but these are member driven efforts. The organization needs to encourage, legitmate and promote this content if they are not going to create their own. I am not saying they need to do it all themselves. Empower us as long as it is open and celebrated. Most members have no idea about the things going on via the web. TM is in a position to promote it to every single member. Younger members are going to expect these simple things and more as time goes on. Public speaking and communication skills are becoming one of the most fundamental skills people need in their careers. Why are they going to pick Toastmasters if we can't mirror their methods of speaking and communication.
Toastmasters- you need to catch up quickly.
9 comments:
Sara,
I myself am a hardcore techie but I like the way the TI site is. The most important thing the TI site should do is be able to point back to local sites. That leads to local control and content geared towards a local audience. Aside from bringing in new members and guests to my clubs, it has recently brought me five new club inquiries, a speechcraft inquiry from the country's top highschool, and a TV interview in a newsmagazine show in our country's top TV network. And I got all that running on FreeToastHost. I am getting bored so soon I will be migrating to Drupal or Joomla with my very own server in my bedroom. I am also going to experiment with videoconferencing for virtual meetings.
Cheers,
Zaldy Co, CC, ALB
http://camanava.freetoasthost.ws
http://emperor.freetoasthost.com
Sarah:
Changing a large organization like Toastmasters is a truly Sisyphean task. As a Vice President-Education for a club I wish you luck in attempting it.
I’d like to share just one simple example of the gap between how things are and how they should be.
The large number of roles in the ten projects for the Competent Leadership (CL) manual is confusing. Page 76 of the manual has a table that is more confusing than enlightening because it does not show which sets of roles have to be completed to finish each project. To find that out you need to put ten Post-It notes in the pages.
What would really help is to have a single page “road map” or “progress chart” with a list of roles that a member could check off as he or she complete them. Three years after the manual was published there should be at least one version on the Toastmasters web site. Is there one? Where is it? I could not easily find it with their site search. So, I started looking elsewhere via Google and eventually found some good examples at the district and club levels. Why didn’t this stuff bubble up to the Toastmasters site?
Your District 31 web site has a CL goals card by Frank Storey in Acrobat.pdf format which prints as a half-page wide bookmark. http://www.district31.org/GoalCards/GC02-GoalCard-Competent%20Leader-with_matrix-Front.pdf While that goals card is nice, the font is barely readable.
District 22 has another CL Manual Worksheet in Acrobat.pdf format that prints on a full page. http://www.toastmasters22.org/downloadable_files/trifold_cl_manual_worksheet.pdf
Wallmasters club in Oregon has a full-page CL Progress chart that is close to ideal for me.
http://www.wallmasters.org/images/CL_ProgressChart010707.rtf
Back on August 26, 2006 the Washington Post ran an article titled The Old Saying: Aging Toastmasters Try to Speak to a Younger Crowd.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082501441.html
It brought up some of your concerns and mentioned Steve Brandon having used the term “Buickization” (getting older than your audience) in an article in the June 2006 issue of Toastmaster. The next step after Buickization is Oldmobileization (which is oblivion)!
I agree that the most important thing is to push back to the clubs. It does that job well enough. Still, an alarming number of clubs still lack webpages. Those clubs are going to loose out on members eventually.
The point is about getting younger members who are not hard-core techies, but are immersed in technology. The clubs and WHQ should be keeping up with the trends, not struggling to understand the fundamentals. I am not asking for cutting edge technology here... I am asking for things people are going to expect. Well, that and better organization- that's a disaster.
Richard,
I have seen all of those and the whole entire manual is confusing. So much so that I don't even know how to explain it to other members. We use a form that was created by someone in District 60... we keep it in our members only section... I will have to put it somewhere for other people, but it's pretty good.
Thanks for sending me a link to the article, I hadn't seen it before. I typically say this is a graying organization.
Hi Sara,
Just found your blog today and adding it to my reader!
I am one of the younger types but am a big techie. I try not to let my love for it bias my efforts but I agree with so much of your list! I would love to be able to subscribe to a feed of changes! By the time a newsletter comes out, the news can be old -- or worse, the mailing list could not have me on it!
I didn't know about the photographs. That's surprising since we do have accounts and even a "My Profile" tab. Maybe the CMS they use doesn't allow for it?
We have so many free tools available and I'm not sure why people aren't utilizing them. The club I joined uses one (freetoasthost) and I love how up-to-date the website is. I'm not sure how much work it is though. I appreciate all the work our webmaster does.
~Jessica, TM
http://ops.freetoasthost.info/
Jessica- I may have to make you my new best toastmaster friend!
We have 164 clubs here in our district and you can count with your fingers the number of clubs with websites. That is why I am proposing a website contest for our district next term. It's a contest where everybody wins.
There are some glitches in the website and I will list some of them here.
You can get yourself demoted when you make a 2nd run of a CC or CL from your current one unless you're already a DTM.
For individual membership awards, sponsorship of members gets credited to your original club regardless of what other club you put in.
The + prefix for cellphone numbers does not show up in the club directory pages.
Some numbers in the Membership columns are incorrect. In some cases, 20 more members than the actual are displayed. TI needs to do a regular recount of the individual roster members.
How I wish dual, transfer, and reinstated members can be input online. I have long deactivated international long distance from my fixed line.
Cheers,
Zaldy Co, CC, ALB
http://camanava.freetoasthost.us
http://emperor.freetoasthost.comstsim
I think that collaborative efforts are the most promising solution, and that is why I have been looking into Toastmasters Wikia as a vehicle for such efforts. I have used multiple wikis in the past with good results (yes, I do edit Wikipedia).
It seems to me that,
• We ought not to wait for Toastmasters International to create training materials. I am now working on two projects to help our members, one on the Toastmasters Educational Program as a whole and the other on the Competent Leadership manual specifically (addressing Richard I Garber's concerns). These materials will ultimately be in multiple formats: as a seminar, as web pages, and as videos.
• We ought to collaborate on training materials for such things as club mentoring, club officer training, and so on. We are now creating this material ourselves, and sharing it will only improve its quality.
• We ought to collaborate on ways that we introduce our own creativity into our meetings. How about Table Topics? I spend a lot of time developing new ideas for the Table Topicsmaster, because the activity is so rewarding when done well. Why not have a place to share these ideas? Also, how about sharing our experiences in carrying out the High Performance Leadership Program?
• The office of webmaster should be a first-class club office, instead of a non-voting office under the tutelage of the vice president of public relations. Webmaster should be a part of the club executive committee, should be part of district-sponsored club officer training programs, and should be one of the club offices involved in the Advanced Leader Bronze program.
Sara mentioned podcasts. I noticed that the district convention I attended last fall was videotaped. But where are these videos published? There were some fine, accomplished speakers up there on stage, and I think our members would be well served to view their speeches as inspiration for improving themselves as speakers.
In a world that has YouTube, Toastmasters should have a great deal more exposure than it does today. This exposure will bring people into Toastmasters, an obvious benefit.
Arthur, you have some great points. We should be promoting technology as a way to help us collaborate when we are not together geographically. The trick is getting people to participate via things like the wiki and that often requires training. I think TMI is in a position to push the importance of technology and get others to buy in.
The webmasters should be an elected position- maybe even replacing the secretary or rethinking that secretary position. The point is to have someone dedicated to thinking about the webpage as a promotional and communication tool. Also, someone who gets training to be a better webmaster.
The other reason some of this has to come from international is the training, which is designed by them. A third has to do with copyright. This has come up specifically with YouTube. They are in no way ready to address copyright in YouTube. There are clubs and members who don't want to violate the organizations copyright. By the time TMI is ready to address is, YouTube will be old news. For District 31 we have an account with Bo Bennett's iGroops (the man who created Free Toasthost) and this is more like our own social network. Those who were recorded signed a release and were posted to the account. Only people with accounts can see the videos. I don't think this is the best solution, but it is one.
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