I treat the time before the show starts, when the speaker has called in but we are not live, as a structured interview. After greeting and thanking the speaker, and a little chitchat, I usually confirmed the pronunciation of the speaker's name and any unusual words in the introduction; I neglected that this time, and as a result stumbled over his last name during the show.
In previous shows, I had had to work to fill the time between the speaker calling in and the show starting. Today, for no reason that I know, I realized that I had some perfectly good questions to ask to keep the conversation flowing; the questions I always prepare just in case the audience doesn't ask anything. I prepare these questions by going to the speaker's website and seeing what are the topics and controversies that interest the speaker. While waiting for the clock to tick to showtime, I casually dropped those questions into our conversation. It worked great; the speaker knew those subjects well and gave answers that were nuanced and enthused. In retrospect, this is obvious; I was inviting the speaker to tell me something on a subject that I knew interested he. Conceptually I circled the questions that seemed to most interest him and crossed out one or two duds.
I will have to add the pre-show interview into my standard script.
I had the script taped to the wall so I could read it looking straight out, not down, as I had learned from Toastmasters. With all this preparation, I was concerned because with only a few minutes to go before showtime, there were about two persons in the audience! However, the show must go on; I avoided answering the speaker's question on the house size because I did not want to discourage him. Eventually we got a crowd of 26; I guess people were just signing in at the last moment or even a couple of minutes late.
Earlier this month I had discussed the section with Regina. She expressed frustration that it was acting like a mere "hobby section" rather than one that actually did anything. I agreed with her on this, since I had been feeling much the same thing (and went into some detail with my last attempt to recruit volunteers.... I should write about that sometime.)
This had put on my mind the subject of action. I noticed that the speaker's organization had a website, http://www.syriaaccountability.org which had a newsletter and facebook/twitter links. I slipped into the script a challenge to the audience: the organization was enabling us to earn a free CLE credit; we need to go to the website anyway to get more information, so while not also subscribe to its newsletter or link to its facebook. Suddenly the lecture seemed even more meaningful, because we were taking action, however small.
One thing I did not do right was not to confirm the pronunciation of his name. I felt embarrassed at stumbling over it, but perhaps few noticed. He was very good humored but I suppose being tortured can put things in perspective.
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Around 5:15 pm I logged into Reema's first Zoomcast Zumba. It was surprisingly fun, since I could dance limited a little by the size of my home office. It was better than following youtube videos because I felt with people in some sense; perhaps this engaged the social pressure to work harder, or perhaps the music selection was comfortable and familiar. I had to cut the dancing short to help as a Timer at a Toastmasters contest. What I learned from this
- Using cell phone for timing can be a problem if someone calls; when you reject the call and get back to the timer it might be off
- Alexa likes to butt in at unhelpful times
- Keeping track of 1 minute vs 2 minutes was not well done; I should have made a script like I do for other events
- The mute/unmute indicators are confusing to me. The word "mute" means that you're not muted; the relevant indicator is a cartoon of phone or microphone crossed out
The call was from Ed; I called him back and he talked about what he did today. Basically his landlord is not able to get the insurance company to send someone out for another two weeks. This is bad for her because mold is bad stuff and shes elderly; it's bad for him because he's elderly too, and recovering from cancer. Ed says his landlord's friend is encouraging her to get a note from her doctor saying she has to get out of the house right way. I'll call her tomorrow and encourage this; I can't send Ed away in the present conditions but I don't want an unrelated roomie right now. He is as little trouble as he can be but it's still another person in my space.
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