Author malw
Date 10 Sep 06, 15:27
Views 3719 Keywords Description An audience-orientated approach to club meetings |
Better than TV! |
The success of any organisation depends upon how favourably people regard its product. The product of each club is its meetings. You can have great publicity … but without good meetings people won’t join. You can have excellent administration … but without good meetings people won’t stay. We need to get our product right before anything else. Where should we start? One approach is performer centred: planning club meetings for the member as performer. Each member is simply plotted in forthcoming meetings for the speeches and other roles most suited to them. This sounds reasonable but I don’t think it goes far enough. If, for example, 40 attend a meeting - the speaker is only 1/40th of those present at any moment. Even if just 10 attend, the speaker represents only 1/10th. What about the people in the audience? Are they just waiting for their turn to perform? I suggest a better approach is audience centred: planning a programme for everyone. This involves adopting the attitude of ‘putting on a show’. It is not only better for the audience but, I believe, the speaker also because it provides a better environment in which to perform. To put on a show we can learn from television. TV attracts enormous audiences because serving the audience informs all of their decisions about programming. It is also our main competitor. Absent members and, more importantly, potential members are most likely watching TV rather than attending club meetings. These are some of the tricks of televsion we can learn from: 1. OPTIMAL PROGRAMMING
2. PROFESSIONAL OUTPUT
3. VITAL INGREDIENTS
At Toastmaster meetings we have three important advantages over television. We are:
If we adopt the tricks of television we can not only compete with them on an even basis but, because of these advantages, have the edge. We can be better than TV! Nick Benning |