Table Topics is a chance for you to speak, without thinking too much.

The Table Topics session was a blast last night. Since it was an Open House, there were a lot of guests who have heard about Toastmasters (usually from Internet or from their spouses), but never participated before. As I said yesterday, the table topics I came up with are related to superheores. It turned out that a lot of guests wanted to talk about their superheroes!

It's definitely easier to say something that you are interested or familiar of.

Since there were people never heard of Table Topics before, I had to give a brief intro of what Table Topics was at the beginning. I said, "Table Topics is a chance for you to speak- without thinking too much, which is what I am doing here ;). "

"Well, the cliche of "think before you speak" doesn't really work too well in this session. Here's what you are going to do- pick a piece of paper from this Ziploc bag, read the message in the paper (you can read it to yourself or read it to us, either way is fine). Then you have 30 seconds to think about what you are going to say. Usually a table topics is between 1 to 2 min. And now, the stage is yours and we are waiting to hear your stories. Any volunteer?"

Here are some of the highlights:

Q: Which superhero would you like to go out for dinner/a date with?

A: The guest said he didn't want to get into trouble since his wife was there at the meeting, he would consider going out with the Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four. ;)

Q: Tell us about your favorite superhero.

A. Another Toastmasters said it was Fantastic Four as well- because she was intrigued by the Fantastic Four comics books in high school. Then she started to read other comic books. Later on, she found out she actually liked reading books. So, Fantastic Four introduced the fun of reading to her.