Attendance of two club meetings.
The Timer keeps the meeting on schedule and ensures that it ends on time. The Toastmaster will ask you to describe you duties near the start of the meeting. Provide a brief, but clear, description of the equipment and procedures involved. It is especially important to discuss the Table Topics timing, as club guests may participate.
The Timer's tools include a box with three lights (like traffic lights), a stopwatch, and a reportl. If you haven't used the equipment before, arrive at the meeting a bit early and ask an experienced member to demonstrate.
Table topics:
Each speaker has 2 minutes
� Green light at 1 minute
� Yellow light at 1 1/2 minute
� Red at 2 minutes with 30 seconds to wrap up.
Speeches:
Check with each individual speaker before their speech to confirm their speech length and if they require any variations in how you will notify them of the time. Ensure that each of you know how long the speech should take and when the signals will appear. Most speeches are 5-7 minutes long, but advanced speeches can take 10-12 minutes or more.
The rule of thumb for timing speeches is:
� Green light when 2 minutes remain
� Yellow light when 1 minute remains
� Red when time is up
Clapping down:
When a speaker has gone more than 30 seconds past their allotted time they are clapped down. Clapping a speaker down is very unpleasant but sometimes necessary. While the speaker has gone to all the effort of writing and practicing the speech, he or she should also be learning to judge their delivery time. The Icebreaker and the number 2 speech ('Be in Earnest') are considered exempt from being clapped down except in extreme cases.
Evaluations:
Use the rules of timing as outlined above, but do not be afraid to clap them down when they are 30 seconds overtime. Adjust the timing sequence to fit the position, e.g.:
� Table Topics Evaluator (5 min)
� Speech Evaluators (3 min)
� Grammarian (3 min)
� General Evaluator (8 min) etc
Near the end of the meeting, the General Evaluator will ask for a report on speech times as well as the table topics speakers and evaluators with their times.
It is also your duty to let the participants know where the timing fell off schedule. Try to add pizzazz to the position and to your report.