A typical Tuesday evening at my local Toastmasters group might find one member opening the meeting with a yodel, another running impromptu speaking as a round of Werewolf, and a third counting "ums" with a clicker. From the outside it sounds chaotic. In practice, it's one of the more disciplined formats I've come across for getting reps as a public speaker.
I joined the club in 2023 and stayed bi-weekly through 2024.
What Toastmasters actually is
Toastmasters International is a non-profit network of local clubs built around a single premise: you get better at speaking by speaking, in front of people, on a clock, with structured feedback. Members progress through a self-paced curriculum called Pathways. Each meeting assigns roles: prepared speakers, evaluators, a table topics master, a grammarian, a timer, an ah-counter. Even on nights when you aren't giving a speech, you're practicing something.
Dues are modest (around $60 semi-annually plus a one-time joining fee). Guests can attend up to three meetings before deciding to join.
WintiSpeakers
WintiSpeakers is the Winterthur chapter, and the distinctive thing about it is that meetings are run entirely in English. That pulls in a mix of native speakers and people sharpening a second or third language, and the room ends up more international than most things in this part of Switzerland. Twenty to thirty people show up on a normal evening. Venues rotate around the city.
Meetings run roughly two hours. A good chunk of the group then decamps to a nearby bar, usually Tres Amigos, for nachos and a post-mortem.
What I did there
I gave prepared speeches, evaluated other people's speeches, and rotated through the supporting roles. A few evenings stand out:
- An AI-themed Table Topics night where members took on the personas of Siri, ChatGPT, and a few others, and had to answer prompts in character. Sillier than it sounds, and harder.
- A meeting our club president opened by yodelling on stage to make a point, by contrast, about filler words.
- A member's "kakaoke" Table Topics format: pick a song lyric, defend it.
- A summer evening on the Home of Innovation rooftop overlooking Winterthur, with Humberto delivering a speech called "Mind the Gap" about a man named Charlie who keeps telling the wrong joke to the wrong audience.
Worth doing
If you live within commuting distance of Winterthur and want a no-pressure way to practice speaking in English (or in front of any group, really), go as a guest first. You can sit in the back, watch a full meeting, and leave without obligation. Three guest visits, then decide.
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