ATM Goes Viral

TM Community channel had an interview with the Immediate Past President of Almaty Toastmasters Club about really huge event - Go Viral.

How did the story of ATM and GoViral start?

So Go Viral was firstly arranged last year in 2017. It was organized by U.S. Council  in Almaty. I think that GoViral is spreading around the world and it can be wherever you are. It’s basically a festival where U.S. government unites innovative thinkers, journalists, musicians, entrepreneurs, filmmakers and many other people. If you haven’t been there yet, I kindly recommend to do it.

This is about word class speakers who come and explain how to GOviral. Spheres that they’re divided into are business, media, culture and this year they added technology. They find speaker on those topics who are world known. Last year we had journalist from New york Times who had an amazing presentation. And alongsided there were 50 different things happening at the same time. There’s a massive schedule of the event. Every time you have to come up with the schedule and you should plan because 20 minutes you’re going to spend here, 15 minutes you’re going to spend there. So you are constantly on the move meeting new people from different spheres.

Last year there were a lot of participants from toastmasters who came there by their own initiatives. Also in 2017 there were some networking sessions. As I work at the US council I was there. One of the key organisers saw me at the meeting. He asked me if I want to do a toastmasters workshop. He said that I can do it during networking session and it’s going to be promoted. He gave me a microphone and asked to announce what I am doing. I had to be a toastmaster and remember why I am doing it, to represent and present my club. I took the microphone and I spoke.

This was last year, it was completely random interaction and we weren’t on the schedule. People were meeting each other during different networking sessions and that’s how they were planning to make workshops. Last year timetable was only in the telegram channel and people could find the announcements there. That’s how people knew about toastmasters workshops last year.

What about this year? How did you make it happen?

This year I reached the main organizer and asked her about workshops and available slots for ATM. She was really excited about that. She knew that we did a random workshop last year that was really well attended – 40-50 people.

These year we did two workshops during two day this year: how to be a better speaker, how to be a better spontaneous speaker and how to network effectively. All three things were really useful for all the speaker. They see impressive speakers and they want to be like them. There are also pitch makers who need to be trained how to make a great pitch. The audience is English speaking

Who was involved in organization of these sessions? How did you find volunteers?

We had about 20 days to organize ourselves very quickly. Basically it was me promoting it the members, we could only invite members. We needed somebody who was experienced in conducting workshops and trainings. We needed to make sure that each training has an experienced trainer and also some people who will be trained how to become a better speaker.

During our toastmasters meeting I asked for volunteers and I immediately found some people. Later on when preparing I proposed three topics for the workshops. I submitted them myself because there was no time. So I just provided topics to cover. It was easier to find people who would conduct the workshop and manage preparation. To have planned agenda is much easier and I really suggest this for all the events.

When preparing workshops we had to make sure that they are very interactive. Therefore we gave them some tips and also a chance to talk. So the main speaker of the session was at the same time a leader. Each leader had facilitators who helped to conduct the meeting. They all did very appropriate trainings. It was very unique and I don’t think that we’ve ever done something similar before.

We needed to make training for about two hours long and at the same time we knew that the audience is constantly moving. No one stands in the same room. It turned out that we were the only session ar Goviral where nobody left. We were so pleased as it meant that the quality was very high. We received feedback from the audience and from the organisers. We saw they didn’t want to leave.