New, More Flexible Model Agenda - WordPress for Toastmasters*

As a follow up to a recent update making it easier to adjust the timing on your agenda, I want to walk you through a few ways you can make your agenda more flexibile.

What you’re seeing below is a new version of the default agenda for new club websites. If you have an existing club website, I’ll explain what you might change to take advantage of options that were not available previously. In particular, when you add an Editable Note to your agenda you can now have a chunk of meeting time associated with that note.

In the example below, Welcome and Introductions is an Editable Note set for 5 minutes. The entire meeting is timed to last for 1 hour (in this case, 6:30 to 7:30 pm).

Welcome and Introductions is an Editable Agenda Note with 5 minutes time allowed

The Editable Note block is a placeholder for content that can be changed on the agenda from meeting to meeting. It can also be used for purposes such as setting a Theme and/or Word of the Day that will be displayed on the agenda. As shown below in the WordPress editor, Welcome and Introductions has been entered as the label that will be displayed to introduce any meeting-specific content.

In the Block properties sidebar, we can see Time Allowed has been set for 5 minutes. Another new option is the Toggle to display a smaller version of the label, bolded, rather than showing it as a headline (the default). I have that alternate display turned on.

An Editable Note in the WordPress editor

Time can also be associated with Agenda Note blocks and Toastmasters Role blocks. An Agenda Note is a paragraph of “stage directions” for standard phases of your meetings, such as “5-Minute Break” that can have time associated with them (for example, 5 minutes). If you want to change the text of an Agenda Note, you have to do that in the WordPress editor.

The advantage of an Editable Note is that it can be edited on the front end by members who don’t necessarily have website editing rights. It’s assumed to be something that changes from one meeting to the next. If no meeting-specific content has been entered, just the label will be displayed.

Here’s an example of adding a note about the activities members can expect during the Welcome and Introductions portion of this particular meeting.

Changing The Timing to Match

Editable Note blocks can be used in combination with the Agenda Time Planner tool, which also allows routine adjustments to be made from the front end of the website. In the scenario illustrated below, a visiting District Director has asked for 10 minutes on the agenda. We’ve added that information to the Welcome and Introductions, but now we also need to adjust our agenda to make room for that activity — and make sure our meeting will still end on time.

Adjusting the Agenda Timing to make room for a longer meeting introduction activity.

The Agenda Time Planner allows us to assign more or less time to different part of our meeting and can also be used to adjust the Count for roles (for example, the number of speakers and evaluators). In addition, it allows us to remove a role from the agenda. In this case, I add 10 minutes to Welcome and Introductions and drop the Topics Master, who normally leads a 10-minute Table Topics session. Alternatives to dropping Table Topics would include reducing the number of speakers and evaluators and the time allowed for their portions of the meeting.

Update: You can now also set the content for Editable Notes block on the Agenda Time Planner screen. So you can change the description that will appear on the agenda and also change the time allowed at the same time.

Clubs can use these tools many different ways, and I hope you will find they help you plan and run better meetings. Although I show the editable block at the beginning, you might also use it in the middle as a placeholder for activities like new member inductions that don’t happen every week. If you come up with your own novel uses for these features, or have ideas about how they could be improved, let me know.

Installing the Model Agenda

If you have an established club website and have already worked on customizing your agenda, follow the instructions above to add the new options. However, if you’re starting over, you may want to use the Setup Wizard to rebuild your agenda. You’ll find it under the Toastmasters Admin menu.

Alternatively, you can use copy and paste the code below into the WordPress editor. First, toggle the editor to show the code view of your agenda template document. Paste in this code, then switch back to visual editing to customize or rearrange the different elements.