Start Here: Welcome to Gloucester Speakers

Welcome to Gloucester Speakers and Toastmasters

Welcome aboard! By joining Gloucester Speakers you've also joined Toastmasters International, a global non-profit education organisation that has helped millions of people become more confident speakers and leaders since 1924.

Our club is a friendly, supportive place to practise. There's no lecturer and no exams. Members learn by doing: giving speeches, taking on meeting roles, and giving each other constructive feedback. Everyone in the room remembers what their first speech felt like, so you'll always find encouragement, never judgement.

We meet on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month at Barnwood Reading Room. Doors open at 7:15 PM for a 7:30 PM start.

How Our Meetings Work

Every meeting follows a structured agenda, and every part of it is run by members. A typical evening looks like this:

1. Opening: the Toastmaster of the evening welcomes everyone and introduces the agenda
2. Prepared speeches: two or three members deliver speeches they've prepared as part of their Pathways projects
3. Table Topics: short impromptu speaking, where speakers respond to surprise questions for one to two minutes
4. Evaluations: evaluators give constructive feedback on each prepared speech
5. Reports: the Timer, Grammarian, and Ah-Counter report on what they observed

Roles rotate every meeting, so over time you'll experience the whole agenda from every seat in the room. Have a look at the meeting roles guide to see what each role involves.

EasySpeak vs Pathways

These two systems confuse every new member at first, so here's the difference:

EasySpeak is the club's meeting scheduling tool. It's where you see upcoming agendas, sign up for meeting roles, and book a slot for your next speech. When you want to take a role at the next meeting, EasySpeak is where you do it. Access it at toastmasterclub.org.

Pathways is Toastmasters International's education programme, delivered through their online platform, Base Camp. It's where you choose your learning path, work through speech projects, and track your progress from Level 1 to Level 5. Start at the Pathways overview.

In short: Pathways tells you what to work on; EasySpeak is where you book the stage time to do it.

You'll find links to both at the top of every page on this site.

Your First Steps

Here's the club's recommended route in, step by step:

1. Start with taking some roles: sign up for a beginner role like Timer, Ah-Counter, or Greeter at your next meeting. It's the fastest way to get comfortable, learn names, and feel part of the evening. Browse the meeting roles to pick one.
2. Plan your first Icebreaker speech: the Icebreaker is the first project in every path, a four-to-six-minute speech about you. Your story, your background, why you joined. It's the traditional first milestone for every Toastmaster, and the audience will be rooting for you. Our Ice Breaker guide walks you through it.
3. Sign up on Pathways: log in at toastmasters.org with your membership details and open Base Camp from your profile.
4. Pick a path: Pathways offers several learning paths depending on your goals. Our guide to choosing your path breaks down the options. Don't overthink it, though: Level 1 is the same whichever path you pick, and our Getting Started with Pathways guide covers all of it, with every worksheet and project PDF downloadable right here on the site.
5. Contact the VP of Education: get in touch at any meeting and they'll align you with a mentor: an experienced member who'll help you plan your Icebreaker, prepare for roles, and settle in.

Questions?

Just ask. At any meeting, any member of the exec team (or honestly, anyone in the room) will be glad to help. There are no silly questions; every one of us was new once.

You can also dig deeper in the Pathways articles and the rest of the Knowledge Base.