Toastmasters and Writers' Workshop

I've been wanting to join the Toastmasters club since I was working at my previous company. I have an earlier post on this, however, yesterday only I have the opportunity to attend the Toastmasters meeting in FOE, MMU Cyberjaya campus. You can find out more at the blog: www.mmutmc.blogspot.com

My comment, it marvelous. I was coming as a guest. Not yet a member. I was one of the volunteer to give a 2 minutes random topic which I have to choose a card. There are several activities happening such as counting the emmm.... err.... aaa...., grammar comment and comment from one appointed observer. Comments given was my errr... was 5 times and a get move up and down which is annoying. (You can see I did the same thing at my youtube, while playing guitar for the song Canon Rock). Other than that, they are saying my public speaking was quite good, like I am used to it. (hurray for me!).

Even coming as a guest, I have something to improve myself. Then I decided to join, as I wanted to sharpen my skills to be able to talk like some of the senior members (although some are student which younger than me), but their ability to deliver the speech was fantastic! I would like to encourage all readers to join the club as well. You can search on the toastmasters website and find the nearest location and attend as a guest!

     Enough of Toastmasters, today I attended another workshop which called Writers' Workshop. Basically how I was in the workshop was I responded to the advertisment inside the campus asking 'WRITERS WANTED'. I did respond, and it was actually for the University's publication.

What I learn during the workshop was non-other than journalist skills. How to write a news for the publication. As the speaker is a lecturer, I feel like some part of the workshop was a bit formal kind of presentation (even he claim to have a casual style of workshop) resulting in a boring way of communication for some part of it. I don't know, maybe I've attended a lot of seminars and training provided by the professional trainers instead of lecturers. And he looks like rushing to finish all the topic as fast as Shinkansen (the bullet train). However, the content is very much useful. (If the trainer read this, no offence. It's totally just my personal opinion. I myself couldn't do better).

I have managed to get some of the idea of journalism. How to write a journal and some brief idea on how to tackle people to read your article. However, it was not easy to master everything thought in a day workshop. Might need a lot more to study. Obviously, the technique is totally different compare to writing a blog. Too many do's and don't, method of delivering the messages etc etc. The single most unlike thing was, the trainer never share the slides, which if I know earlier I have snap all the slides content using my Blackberry!

Hopefully I can be benefited from all these two events I've attended in these 2 days.