Toastmasters International - Reveille

Every Thursday at 6:30 a.m. I travel to the Ol' South Pancake House in order to attend the weekly meeting of Toastmasters International.  The particular club I am a member of is Reveille Toastmasters, comprising of roughly twelve to fifteen members.  Of those members, roughly ten are active and participate on a regular basis.  As with anything else in life there are a few items I do not like about the club I attend, but the positives far outweigh any negative factors or issues I must deal with.  Primarily I use the organization of Toastmasters International as a social outing.  Even though I have lived in Fort Worth for over five years, I still find it difficult to meet people of substance.  Meeting people is a priority, but I also have shifted my focus to building depth of relationship now that I have a wide base of networking and contacts in place.  The two areas of focus must go hand in hand.  Only second to the social outing aspect, the other natural byproduct of these meetings is building confidence in and the actual skills of public speaking and listening.  Considering my work history I thought public speaking was a natural gifting for me, but some of the club members are very good and outshine me on any given day.  One area to strive toward is polished spontaneous speaking, especially for longer than five to seven minutes.  Overall I really enjoy Toastmasters International and look forward to the weekly meetings.  I strongly encourage anyone interested in the organization to check it out.  If anything else, attend merely for the sake of meeting new people and building a personal network.