Welcome!

When you get your Toastmaster Magazine this month, don’t throw it away! This month’s edition is special because it has the writings of a man of great talent, flair and amazing modesty. That man would be yours truly.

 

Welcome to mySpaith! Here I share my smartass opinions on smart and stupid things I see public speakers and leaders do, with some focus on Toastmasters but not limited to that. If you’ve read my magazine article, think about an entire site for making fun of things like “The Brady Bunch Evaluation,” without an editor to rein me in. And without an editor to fix my typos, unfortunately.

 

Thoughts on the Article

The editors at the Toastmaster Magazine are phenomenal. This is my third article they’ve published and each time they’ve been friendly, responsive, professional, and fix up my stupid mistakes without taking away my voice in the process. Every author should be so lucky!

 

Reading the article again was an interesting experience. I submitted it this January and hadn’t read it until I had the magazine in my hands two days ago. It almost felt like someone else wrote it. I liked the way it turned out, mostly.

 

If I could change anything, I would whack about 100-200 words off it. I’m a ruthless editor (mom was an English teacher), but I feel I could’ve made the writing even more crisp. Re-reading my article inspired me to re-read some of the older posts here. I can do much, much better on the “crispness” here - and will.

 

Why should you come back here?

You should care about mySpaith because it has fun, informative, and no-nonsense posts every week on subjects you care about.

 

mySpaith is basically an “Evaluation Geek” site. The idea of the “Evaluation Geek” is that I evaluate speakers outside Toastmasters, from shady real estate salesmen to good natured bureaucrats to whoever else I can watch (for free) in the future. Rather than the standard Toastmaster “good/suggestions” evaluation, not being limited to three minutes means I can dig deep into specifics and share general lessons for all of us.

 

For instance:

Tricking Your Audience Into Showing Up On Time

Why Kojak is a Bad Model For Public Speakers

Don’t Let Your Bureaucratic Buddy Screw Up Your Opening

 

You can learn a lot from both good and bad speakers and have fun doing it. You can have fun reading about someone else doing it, too – especially if that someone is a smartass! As long as there are (free) speakers for me to evaluate, there will always be something to write about.

 

I encourage you to add mySpaith to your favorites or to subscribe to the blog. If you know bad Toastmasters who throw their magazines away without reading them, tell them about this site if you think they’d enjoy it. And if you’re trying to get someone to join, I have propaganda (uhm, positive feedback) about Toastmasters in Prospective Toastmasters and plan on filling this out especially.

 

Finally, if you’re in a cool Toastmaster club and you want some free advertising or want to find a cool club, check out the cool clubs link.

 

Evaluator, Evaluate Thyself

Evaluating strangers means I have to let strangers evaluate me. Please let me know the good and bad (and I do mean bad) that you saw in my magazine article or in any post.

 

I’m proud of mySpaith. I think it’s a good site. Getting Toastmasters from around the world giving me hell will make it a great site!