 A few days back when TTM Xavier approached me and said, Kaji, we want to do the COT and I would like you to do something. I thought about it and the next morning itself, I told him I have a great idea. I want to give a session on speechcraft digital, the new version. How new you may ask me? It's so new that if I go to the Toastmasters website and click on say education, I click on speechcraft. It takes me to the old version of speechcraft where I can go and buy the starter kit by paying $20. So even Toastmasters has not yet updated their website with this new version. They have updated it but not everywhere as you will see. So I want to talk today about this new speechcraft which was released in December. But before I do that, let me just give a brief intro about myself to those who don't know me. My name is Kajedan Barreto. I am a distinguished Toastmaster. Besides Toastmasters, I do have other hobbies, photography being one of them, scuba diving. And recently my hobby has been to create YouTube videos for Toastmasters called Tech for Toastmasters. Do check it out. The scope of today's session is first of all, what is speechcraft? I will give you introduction to the new speechcraft, a hands-on experience of what it looks like. And what does it mean if a speechcraft decides to become a member? Q&A session at the end. What is speechcraft? It's basically a tool where you can attract non-members, give them a small program so that they become competent public speakers within a short period of time. And the whole idea behind it is if they like it, wow, this is good. I have learned something. I have become a good speaker. Why don't I become a Toastmaster? Why don't I join a club and improve myself even further? So it's a club building tool ideally conducted in eight sessions. It can be conducted in a shorter period, but that's the recommended time frame. One of the problems that we had with speechcraft was that speechcraft, like a traditional program that we used to do three years ago, was designed for paper manuals to be done in person. And then pathways happened and everything moved online. Pathways is an education program. And so there was a pressure to TI saying, why don't we adapt speechcraft in a similar way? And they kept saying, yes, we will do it. We will do it. And my God, they did it. And they have done it in such a way that it looks better than pathways, if you ask me. They launched it just the end of December, I think. And I immediately went ahead, purchased a speechcraft kit. And the experience what I want to show you is what is this all about? How do you transition from the old speechcraft to the new speechcraft? And from speechcraft, if the members decide to become Toastmasters, how they can transition to the new pathways program? If you want to know what is the new speechcraft, all you have to do is you have to type speechcraft.toastmasters.org. That's the landing page of the speechcraft programs. There is an overview of what is the speechcraft about. It's a completely different homepage, but first of all, from a coordinator's point of view, if you as a club want to take the initiative and do the new speechcraft program, you will first of all log into the system using your Toastmasters ID. There is no separate ID here. You have now a beautiful landing page with all the information about speechcraft at your fingertips. And the first thing as a coordinator, you would need to do, if you want to plan this event, is to understand that speechcraft, at least the new one, is not something that you should just say, okay, tomorrow I want to start a speechcraft. It has a good planning process, a sort of a checklist. We are talking about what you need to do, even before you start with the new speechcraft program. And that is basically verify that you are eligible to be a speechcraft coordinator. And that means you are a member in good standing and you have the support of your club members. So you identify that. Let's do the speechcraft. Let's build a membership. Let's attract people who are interested to do it even in this time, in the online world, and perhaps because of the online world. And then you have a checklist to start. Ideally, plan six to eight weeks in advance. So if you want to do it two months ahead, start planning. And the first thing again, you will need to do is now to buy the Toastmasters Speechcraft Digital Bundle, $50. Let's see what we get from this $50. So basically the new digital bundle is priced at $50. That's the first part you have to understand. And you have to buy this digital bundle before you can schedule the speechcraft, because the order that you place and the ID that you get from the digital bundle is what you will link to your speechcraft. And when you purchase it for this $50, what you get is a digital learning for five speechcrafters. That means your speechcraft has to be now planned in multiples of five. Get five Non-Toastmasters or 10 Toastmasters, but not six, because it doesn't make any economic sense anymore. And so they will get licensed essentially for five speechcrafters and access to the base camp, like how you have pathways access. Each of these five speechcrafters will get access to the base camp system. So once you purchase this bundle, once you click on this and say add, I have already done that. Once you pay that $50, it could be paid by the coordinator or it could be paid by the club. But if you then go to your profile and look at your purchases in your order history and you say my downloads, you would find the kit available for download. But this is basically just a flyer and some information telling you as a coordinator. Yeah, you have this order number. This order number is what you need to connect to your speechcraft program now. And it will tell you, okay, with this order number, go to speechcraft.toastmasters.org, which is where we were before, and start your process, start planning it. And how do we do that? We say, okay, I have purchased my digital bundle. Let me create an event. Let me go and say I want to create an event. Since we are logged into the Toastmasters website, it does know which other clubs I belong to. So it will ask which club is hosting this speechcraft. So you have to choose, for example, let's say I want to run it under capital speakers because I have their support. And club URL, that is the website of the club. In our case, I don't have a club website, but I do have a Facebook page. So you could link it and post it here. And it will be available for people when they search for the speechcraft programs. And this is where we put the order number. And once you put the order number, what it will do is it will validate that the order number is there or no. And in my case, if I use this order number, it says it's an invalid order number because I've already used it. Additional information, you can give a name to your event. Let's say I'll call it speechcraft by capital speakers. Set your time zone where the event will happen. And this is very important because everything is now automated. I did mention that the ideal number of sessions is eight. So if you want to do it in eight sessions, you can do it in six or even four. I don't recommend it, but it is possible. So you can set your sessions. And when you do that, by the way, the event will be structured accordingly. And you'll see that in the next step, that you say eight sessions. And you can say, when do you want to start it? Let's say we will start it in March, first of March till, let's say, end of April. And you set the time, what time you would like to start it from. So let's say I want to do it at 6 p.m., right? So it starts at 6 p.m. And the program will go up to, let's say, end of April, two months. I want to do it nice and easy. And so I can say from eight o'clock, six to eight every day, p.m. So that becomes your schedule for that event. And it will be published on the Speechcraft website. And you can set up the days, let's say every Tuesday, once a week, twice a week, it's up to you. How do you want to do it? And you can choose the format. You can do the program online, you can do it in person, or you can do it hybrid, both in person and you can post the location details, the map, if it is done in person and so forth. And this is the most important part. You can set up the cost per participant for this event. How much you are going to charge? The suggested, the suggested maximum price must not exceed cost of 12 months of Toastmasters membership due. And how much is that? We can charge up to $90 per participant. Is it worth $90 a Speechcraft? Of course it is. It's worth much more than that. In fact, the value of Speechcraft is that it makes somebody who has maybe not very good public speaking skills into almost a confident speaker if he attends those eight sessions properly. And that has value. You can of course make it free. There is no restriction from the TI, whether you want to do it or free or no, as it mentions. Some coordinators choose to make their event free. But there is a problem when you make programs free. People do not invest as much time because, oh, it's free anyway. If I miss two sessions, what's the harm? But when they put some money in, they want to see the value of that money. So at least for that reason, we should put some money. So you can choose whether you want to break even. You want to charge them the $10 that you have paid TI for each person. You want to charge them extra because you have additional cost. If you do it in person, it's up to you. Up to $90 is the recommended price that you can charge. Once you do it, you say agree and you click submit and it will create the event for you. It will create the event based on the number of sessions that we have defined and you are as a coordinator ready for the next step. Since I have already created the event, let me go to the event section. And this is my event. As you can see, I have scheduled it from 1st, March to 30th, April. That's my expectation. And the reason I have done it is because there are some restrictions on speechcraft. At the end of your event, that is, let's say 30th of April, after 90 days from that date, access to this program will be removed. So they give you your program and then they give it 90 days to access the base camp for the speechcraft and after that it stops. So I have created mine as Zoom. This is my contact details and the capital speakers. And as you can see, I have not yet added any speechcrafters as yet. I need to get five seats filled, zero of five seats. And if I want to fill those seats, all I have to do is click on Add Speechcrafter and give their email address and name, like how we do in Toastmasters when we want to add members. And when we do that, they will get a link to join this program and they'll get a link to become part of that base camp where they can access their Toastmaster speechcraft material. All very cool. Once you have those five participants or 10, if you want to do it as a multiple of five, then you can go to your learning system. Hopefully all of your experts in Pathways, it is essentially taking you to a mini version of Pathways. And from my perspective, from where I'm sitting, it looks a lot better than Pathways by the way, more pleasing, more easier. If you know that Pathways is actually run by a company called Cornerstone on Demand, CSOD. That's why you always see this word CSOD on top. The thing is, it's not as complicated as Pathways. When the Speechcrafters they join, as you saw that you have this sessions already predefined because I had selected eight sessions. And then you have all of the resources for each of the session. And one of the important thing I want to tell you is the difference between Speechcraft and Pathways and why even some new Toastmasters might benefit by going through the Speechcraft program is because they have kept the learning exactly the same. And I always loved the Speechcraft because the way Speechcraft works is it guides a person from the beginning where he gives an icebreaker speech and then he moves to projects that slowly build upon that like how to organize your speech. That is one of the projects. Body language, vocal variety, presentation. So these are the things which were from our old competent communicator manual and they have retained exactly the same structure. And for that reason, I think that this program will do very well other than the cost and the five people limit. It's designed beautifully. And if you see the they have even built a sort of a mini base camp manager for the coordinator. So there is no base camp manager separately. You have everything in that one dashboard. So if I click on Speechcraft dashboards, of course it is empty now, but it will give me who are the participants, who are the five participants, what speeches they have given. And where are they? Have they done the self assessment and they have marked their projects as completed? All of this will be available as a dashboard for the Speechcraft coordinator. Even the learning looks a lot better than pathways. If I open this, how to get started? It looks like pathways program, but it is organized a little better. I think they have taken their learnings from pathways and they have structured the presentation in a way that it is easier for non-toastmasters to quickly assimilate and understand what's going on. It looks nice. You click start project, well-defined, you click next. So no complications in navigation. People should be able to, even those who are not tech savvy, should be able to use the system quite easily. That's the Speechcraft program. Plan it, pay the digital version, onboard five Speechcrafters or in multiples of five. Plan your event and you have a nice dashboard where you can run everything in one place. A couple of things I want to highlight to you is the FAQ, the frequently asked question. And there are two questions, one I have already answered. That is, how long can you access your Speechcraft? That is 90 days after the end of your session. And the other part, which is very important for non-toastmasters who are considering joining Toastmasters is this part. That is, I have given some speeches in my Speechcraft program and now I became a Toastmaster. What happens to those speeches? Can I apply them as credits in pathways? And the answer is yes. So let's say you had given just one speech. So when you become a member and you get your free path, you can automatically mark your icebreaker in pathways as completed. That's straightforward. But look at the last part. If you have, for example, been a very active Speechcrafter and somehow you manage to give a speech every day. And that's theoretically possible because we are talking about now five people. And five people means almost everyone can give a speech every session if they want. So if there were eight sessions, it is realistically possible that somebody could have given seven speeches. And if he did that and then said, hey, I want to be a member of your club. Okay, sign me up. He pays the fees, gets his free path and he can immediately mark the entire level one as completed. He can mark the introduction to Toastmaster Mentoring. That's the common project across all paths as completed. And he can mark two electives from level three. So he's already halfway through the pathways program. And that's the advantage of this new program because if you really do it from the benefit of the non-members and then say, okay, I want to become a Toastmaster, you are already giving them a heads up into the Toastmaster's pathways program. And they will appreciate that. I have my 30 minutes up. So now we have some 10 minutes. If you have any questions, I will address them. Do we get club points for conducting a Speechcraft program? The club doesn't get any points, but the coordinator, it's one of the requirements if he wants to become a Distinguished Toastmaster, he will get a credit for that. How many sessions are required for Speechcraft is a question from Beta. Just stick to eight sessions. You can really conduct a beautiful Speechcraft program with eight sessions. You can condense it to six sessions, but then it becomes rushed. You have to either have it as a longer session or you have to basically rush through it. And I don't recommend rushing through this program because you really want to give them, after each session, some time for the participants to think, plan and come up with their new speech. And if you rush it, then they will not get that benefit. You want them to feel, wow, I achieved something and then I want to become a Toastmaster. That's the ultimate objective of the Speechcraft program. Yes, they can benefit and they can go out and be confident, but you want them to become better. You want them to become Toastmasters like me. Is there a separate website for this? The website is speechcraft.toastmasters.org. There's no separate website, but there's a subdomain, speechcraft.toastmasters.org. Mostly we consider Speechcraft for Non-Toastmasters. Toastmasters can be Speechcrafters too. Yes, if you are a new Toastmaster and you want to go through that structured program of the competent communicator, Speechcraft is the best way to do it. Ideally, the objective is of course to get Non-Toastmasters to become Toastmaster. That's the primary objective. There's no harm running the Speechcraft program for people to quickly go through that whole cycle of beautifully designed Toastmaster program, which we are missing in the Pathways program because we switched to Pathways. Does a non-member get a certificate of participation even though he decides not to join? Of course he will get a completion. There's a graduation ceremony. The eighth session is basically a graduation ceremony. Each participant gets a certificate of completion saying you are now a Speechcrafter.