You’re the Topics master for the next club meeting and you’re really up for the challenge. You have visions of yourself marching to the top of the meeting room in McGrattans, taking your place authoritatively at the top table and casting your beady eye at your willing victims in the audience from underneath your monocle. Before you embark on the hours upon hours of research I know that you are about to undertake in search of the BEST EVER topics questions that Vox Populi Toastmasters has ever heard however, there are one or two vital things you need to know about being a Topics Master at a Vox Populi Club Meeting. Read on:
- Can you crack a joke from the top table? This is vital attribute of a Vox Populi Topics master – NO STONY FACED individuals need apply. Even better if you can laugh at yourself while you’re up there, because chances are, one or two of your ‘jokes’ are going to rebound on yourself.
- Can you be inventive? By inventive I don’t necessarily mean scientifically so, although the world of science has been the subject of many a great topics session at Vox Populi. Perhaps inventive is a poor choice of word, let’s replace it with ‘creative’. Can you be creative with your topics? Can you come up with topics the Vox Populi members can identify with or even better, some that they can’t identify with at all? Now that would really put them out on a limb and test their own powers of invention when it comes to answering!
- Can you use props or visual aids as part of your topics session? AAAGHH I hear you cry, I’m serious, I respond. Vox Topics Masters in the past have used a variety of props – everything from newspaper clippings to using a can of deodorant as the prop for a potential sales pitch from a Vox member. You had to be there. If you’re feeling really ‘creative’, there’s that word again, why not have a go at doing visual topics using a powerpoint presentation of slides showing images which can act as the springboard for topic questions.
- Can you think of a good theme to your topics session? It’s not a prerequisite for a topics session but it can add a nice ‘extra touch’ if you have a theme around your topic questions. I picked the theme of ‘Creative advertising campaigns’ when I did Topics Master previously, other Vox members have picked movie one liners as themes for topics – the sky is the limit.
- Can you strike the balance between challenging topics and topics that push our buttons that little bit too far? The role of the Topics Master is to challenge Vox members to think on their feet, even if that means making us feel a little bit out of our depth at times. So feel free to ask us about our ‘best failed experience’, what it was like to start our first job, who we first fancied at school (NOT) and to recount the greatest lessons in life that we have learned.
Just as long as you realise that if you pick on me with a nasty topic I am going to write about you in my next blog, and not in a nice way. Ha, ha, ha.
Gemma Shannon, Vice President Public Relations