Some reviews might be an idea.
This meeting reminded us of the importance of prior preparation. This time, some members must have been too busy, oblivious, or inexperienced to do what we are expected to do. That caused some extra work for other members. We might use some review of our standard operation procedure, which is explained below.
Standard operation procedure
Before a meeting, there are a lot of things to be done by many different role-takers. Speakers are expected to
Decide on a project to base their speeches on and update a website called "easy-Speak" a couple of weeks prior to the meeting
Update the speech title approximately one week prior to the meeting
Download, fill out, and send the Evaluation Form
Toastmaster of the Day (TMOD) is expected to
Put together a draft agenda and have it proofread by the General Evaluator, Vice President Education (VPE), and President. Send the finalized agenda to members via email by Friday of the previous week
Make sure every role-taker is aware of and prepared for their role(s)
General Evaluator (GE) is expected to
Communicate with the evaluation team members (Speech Evaluators, Ah-Counter, Grammarian, and Timer) to ensure that they are ready
Topicsmaster is expected to
Check easy-Speak and find out who is joining the meeting and who has which role
Check the agenda for the time allotted to the Table Topics session and prepare enough topics
Put together the list of attendees with their roles and decide who to call on to speak and in which order
Speech Evaluators are expected to
Receive the evaluation form from their respective speakers
Understand what the speaker has learned and/or gone through
Know what to evaluate
Communicate with the speaker to find out if they have any specific area of their speech they want them to pay special attention to
Ah-Counter and Grammarian are expected to
Check the finalized agenda to understand how much time they will have for their reports and be prepared to complete their reports within the time allotted
Timer is expected to
Check easy-Speak to know the time requirement of each speech
Check easy-Speak to know who is attending in person and who is attending online
Zoom Manager, View Manager, and Mute Manager are expected to
Be familiar with the technology and what they are expected to do
Vote Counter is expected to
Log in to Poll Maker, a website we use for voting for Best Speaker, Best Table Topics, and Best Evaluator awards, and edit the three polls beforehand
Talk with the TMOD to decide how they will communicate the voting results
On the meeting day, every member is expected to show up or log in by 7:15 so that the TMOD, GE, Topicsmaster, VPE, and President can make sure that every role-taker is present and that no last-minute adjustment of the roles is needed.
What actually happened and what we can do differently
At this meeting, however, prepared speakers were slow in updating their speech information, making the Toastmaster of the Day, General Evaluator, and VPE wonder if they were ready. The TMOD had to send multiple private messages to check how well they were prepared and to prompt them to update the information. He also had to check easy-Speak several times to see if the information was updated, each time to find the information was not updated. Ultimately, the agenda was finalized with the speech titles printed as "TBD." This is the very first time ever that the TMOD had to do in his seven years and nine months as a Toastmaster. We can do better than that.
On the meeting day, some members showed up at the very last moment, forcing the TMOD to arrange a backup plan in case a role-taker came in late or didn't show up at all.
The meeting itself was not bad at all, but these small things will add up and make the meeting quality deteriorate gradually. It is high time for us to be reminded of the importance of following what we are expected to do.
Obviously, we sometimes have to prioritize other things in life. Still, our collective effort to do our best to keep and better the meeting quality is crucial. We need to be a bit more responsible and help each other create a better learning environment for ourselves. We can do a lot better than this.
