Welcome to our page where we share a little bit of background information about Vox Populi and Toastmasters International!
You’ve already taken the first step on your journey to developing your public speaking skills by reading this page. Why not take the next step and join us at one of our meetings, which take place the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month in the Harcourt Hotel Dublin at 7pm. You can sign up to receive our meeting agendas here.
What happens at a Vox Populi meeting?
Our off the cuff speaking or ‘topics session’ which takes place in the first half of our meetings is a great way of developing your public skills as well as the ability to ‘think on your feet.’ All members and guests are welcome to participate in our topics sessions. These sessions can be a great way to help you deliver that flip chart presentation at your next team meeting, when your manager asks you to feed back on some aspect of your work just at that moment.
There are a number of advantages to formally joining Vox Populi rather than just attending as a guest. The members all take up a number of roles to help with running the meeting on the night. Doing roles as a member is a great way of building your public speaking experience – particularly the role of Toastmaster or host for the evening. Experience of doing this role can be very helpful for chairing meetings in work situations etc.
The fact that a lot of the roles involve giving a report at the end is also a great way of building your experience of public speaking for work. When you join Vox Populi as a member, you will automatically be assigned a role for the next meeting you attend. Our Vice President of Education, will provide you with a full briefing on how to do the role and you can always reach out to any of us on the committee for assistance if you are unsure of how to do anything.
Building your public speaking experience by doing speeches
When you join as a member, you will also have the option of doing speeches. You start by selecting your online educational programme, Pathways with Toastmasters International. Further information on Pathways is available here.
When you join Vox Populi, the Vice President of Membership sets up your profile with Toastmasters International and Toastmasters International send you your logins to access Pathways on their website. You can do a quiz to determine which Path is best for you to follow. When you select it, you follow online training with Toastmasters International to progress through each level in your Path. There are five levels in each path. A path features a minimum of 14 projects.
Your first speech is your Icebreaker where you introduce yourself to the club and tell us a little bit about yourself and your motivation for joining Toastmasters. You will receive a formal evaluation on every speech you do from another club member and you will also receive evaluation slips with feedback from the audience, to help you to make any improvements you may wish to make to your speaking style and delivery
In levels 4 and 5 you can do projects on really exciting things like setting up your own podcast and moderating a panel discussion. But don’t worry, you build up to this level gradually over time, with the support of the other club members!
What makes Vox Populi special 😊
Our club is a very supportive and encouraging club and we all help support each other in becoming the best public speakers that we can be. There is also a social aspect to the club and we all tend to go for a few drinks and an informal chat together after our meetings as well, which is a really nice way to connect with one another!
How to join
The annual rate for joining Vox Populi is €130 euro, contact vpm@voxpopulidublin.com if you wish to join part of the way through the year, as there may be a reduced rate for this. We take a break for the summer in July and August but are back in full flow in September. So if you are serious about taking your public speaking skills to the next level contact vpm@voxpopulidublin.com for a membership application form today!