PPTx - Last night's meeting

Greetings my friends!

Boy, did we have a splendid meeting last night!  Two superb professional presentations by Jonathan and Joy.  Table Topics by Deborah and evaluations by Ray Pezolt (GE), Linda Rhea and Ray Mohr.

The venue was excellent.  The room was lighted using canned track lighting with stage lights and doors.  We were able to control the lighting on the stage and practice this aspect of presentation.  We will have the opportunity to use this venue again and there are lessons to be learned and practiced by us in this respect.  Great place, thanks Joy for setting this up.

I provided a professionally formatted color folded agenda for the every member of the audience.  The primary roles that were planned to be witnessed by the audience were printed on this agenda without timing, simply the order of performance.  The perspective of this agenda was an audience member at a professional event.

I created two other agendas that accompanied this "external facing" agenda.  First I created two copies of a detailed agenda with the times to the minute with each person's role and the order of appearance.  I used one to manage the meeting as the Master of Ceremonies and meeting planner.  The meeting was run comparing "forecasted" and "actual" times throughout the meeting.  It dictated that I would end the meeting at 8:58 PM and hand it to Tom Hobbs, which is exactly what was done.  The second copy was given to the GE so that he knew exactly the planned execution of events.  Nobody else saw these agendas as I felt that these two roles were the only ones in a 'need to know' position.

A single copy of a third agenda was prepared for the timer which outlined each role and the timing with green/yellow/red card timing, including Jonathan's Q&A session.  This way the timer was completely prepared without further communication and confusion by anyone.  The timer is a subsystem of the meeting.  I believe that in traditional Toastmasters meetings, the timer takes a visible role as we are openly in training.  In the PPTx club however, this subsystem should not have as much visibility to the audience as this club's meetings are intended to be audition situations, not open training sessions as are normal TM meetings.  The purpose of the timer is to let the people on the stage know where they are, that's it.

All this said, I felt that there was some confusion as the meeting transpired, perhaps due to not understanding the thought process that went into this strategy.

From my perspective, next time I will put the names of those who are running the subsystems on the back page, acknowledging their contributions.  I think several felt that they had been forgotten.  I apologize to those who had these feelings and confusion.

From the speakers perspective: I believe both made mention to the timer the amount of time they expected.  During the meeting planning communication you had provided me your requirements - the manual, project, timing, venue requirements, audience set, and introductions.  During meeting planning the speakers and evaluators were informed two days ahead of the meeting of the assignments.  I, as a professional Master of Ceremonies, dealt with all aspects of your requests and felt that I had not made it clear that I completely set the stage for your presentation, leaving no stone unturned.  As a lesson learned, I should have confirmed with you that all aspects were handled so that you could focus entirely on your presentation, not on the subsystems.

Finally, I think the overall approach was the correct one as a professional.  When you attend a concert, you go to watch the band.  You don't care who was running the lights, running the sound board, running the concession stand, ie: all the supporting services.  My "external facing" agenda was designed to present the band to the audience, not to acknowledge all of the background systems.  The band is entirely responsible for their music decisions, instruments and any other activities; the hosting venue is responsible for providing all the supporting systems.  If the two interface correctly, the process creates efficiency for all individual systems to work in unison with zero confusion.  This is the spirit that I ran this meeting.

I welcome any feedback you might have as we are members of this club in training - taking our skills to the next level.  We are creating and honing skills and processes that can and will be used in the outside world.  The only way we do this is by feedback by our peers.

Thank you for supporting me my friends!  It was a great night.

Dirk Kittredge, DTM

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