Main Street Motivators Heads Outside!

Julie O’Connell doing Table Topics.
PHOTO BY ELLI MORRIS

Fall, we decided, would be a great time to have an outdoor meeting. Our Main Street Motivators club meets at noon in downtown Richmond, Virginia, in a skyscraper with a large courtyard. Resplendent with food trucks, we’d have a ready-made and ever-changing audience!

An unseasonably warm October day, coupled with inspiration from previous Toastmaster magazine articles, set us in motion. We discussed how the meeting would unfold, took our just-created “Don’t Fear the Speaker” poster and handouts outside, found an unoccupied bench and jumped right into an impromptu version of Table Topics.

The Toastmaster barked out the invitation to “come up and give a one- to two-minute talk. We’ll provide the questions!” To our delight, we had takers! One even stuck around long enough to respond twice, receiving two evaluations.

Members had a grand time. No fearing the reaper, or the speaker, at all!