It is amazing how much we can learn about behaviours and patterns when we know and have enough information. I am not an expert on data, but I pay attention to it, and I invest an effort to collect it. It is fun to do it as well.
In order to leverage power of data, we need to collect it first.
As an executive of Dawnbreakers since 2009, I have built a data information repository about the club thanks to some useful websites.
When I joined Dawnbreakers in January 2009, there were no any websites associated with the club, so there was no data. At the end of every meeting, no information was saved and we didn’t know anything about our attendance, number of speeches, words of the day, meeting themes, and awards winners. Obviously some data was kept, to be passed to Toastmasters International, but only officers in charge (VP of Education, VP of Membership) possessed it.
And then, Easy-Speak came.
Together with Wang Yip, I introduced and "pushed" Easy-Speak three years ago. It was really Wang who started it but it was me who started populating its database with retroactive meetings information. I was able to do it because I had audio recordings of the meetings since October 2012.
It was a long process in which I spent lots of time listening the audio, and then transcribing it to Easy-Speak.
The process became easier when we exclusively started to use Easy-Speak for our club management. Thanks to Blaine Zuk who as VP of Education pushed it in 2014, we utilize now Easy-Speak as our meeting/members/data management tool. It is a private application and only authorized users can leverage its data and functions.
As I enjoy working with data and I am curious, I am pleased to present some insights about Dawnbreakers 2015 year, and provide some comparisons with 2013 and 2014.
Everything starts and ends with meetings. Without them, nothing would happen. So, there were 43 meetings in 2015. That is pretty close to previous two years, when we had 44 (in 2013) and 43 (in 2014) meetings.
Do you know who was the most frequent participant?
People who attended more than 50% of meetings:
Congratulations to Peter Kossowan who only missed 3 meetings. And that is not all, Peter performed 37 roles during meetings he attended. And he was always the first one to show up and help setting the room up.
Some of our data
As I enjoy working with data and I am curious, I am pleased to present some insights about Dawnbreakers 2015 year, and provide some comparisons with 2013 and 2014.
Meetings
Everything starts and ends with meetings. Without them, nothing would happen. So, there were 43 meetings in 2015. That is pretty close to previous two years, when we had 44 (in 2013) and 43 (in 2014) meetings.
Do you know who was the most frequent participant?
People who attended more than 50% of meetings:
Congratulations to Peter Kossowan who only missed 3 meetings. And that is not all, Peter performed 37 roles during meetings he attended. And he was always the first one to show up and help setting the room up.
18 people (in the table above) attended more than half of all meetings.
There were 113 speeches in 2015. For comparison, there were 117 speeches in 2013, and 99 speeches in 2014.
This is where we can improve. Basically we didn’t use opportunities to speak, as there were 16 speaking slots that were not used in 2015. If you are asking how I got to that number, it is a simple calculation: 43 meetings x 3 speeches = 129 speeches. Out of 129 possible speeches we had 113, so that means that 16 were not delivered.
This number is actually very close to the number in 2013 when we had 117 speeches during 44 meetings, and this resulted with 15 unused slots. In 2014 we were not that successful, as out of 129 slots we only used 99.
Below is the list of people who delivered the most speeches in 2015:
The most frequent speaker was Richard Coulter, who spoke 6 times out of 20 meetings.
Speeches
There were 113 speeches in 2015. For comparison, there were 117 speeches in 2013, and 99 speeches in 2014.
This is where we can improve. Basically we didn’t use opportunities to speak, as there were 16 speaking slots that were not used in 2015. If you are asking how I got to that number, it is a simple calculation: 43 meetings x 3 speeches = 129 speeches. Out of 129 possible speeches we had 113, so that means that 16 were not delivered.
This number is actually very close to the number in 2013 when we had 117 speeches during 44 meetings, and this resulted with 15 unused slots. In 2014 we were not that successful, as out of 129 slots we only used 99.
Below is the list of people who delivered the most speeches in 2015:
The most frequent speaker was Richard Coulter, who spoke 6 times out of 20 meetings.
Icebreakers
It is always special to witness an Icebreaker speech, and at Dawnbreakers we had that privilege more than less 14 times!
We always say that someone becomes a toastmaster only once they deliver their Icebreaker speech.
There were 3 icebreakers in March and 3 in June, 2 in January and February.
There were no icebreakers in May, September and December.
Also, there were 16 icebreakers in 2013 and 17 in 2014.
This also means that there have been 47 new people (who gave Icebreaker) in our club since, and that means we got lots of fresh blood and new ideas.
We always say that someone becomes a toastmaster only once they deliver their Icebreaker speech.
There were 3 icebreakers in March and 3 in June, 2 in January and February.
There were no icebreakers in May, September and December.
Also, there were 16 icebreakers in 2013 and 17 in 2014.
This also means that there have been 47 new people (who gave Icebreaker) in our club since, and that means we got lots of fresh blood and new ideas.
Being "ditched"
Yes, you can get ditched at Dawnbreakers. Many of us were ditched numerous times. We were ditched by our fellow members. We also ditched our colleagues. I did it too.
If you were a toastmaster at Dawnbreakers you know that feeling: It is 6:55 AM, and your Sgt. at Arms hasn’t arrived yet (well, thanks to Peter Kossowan, the room is already arranged). Chairman is also absent, and even more, 2 out of 3 evaluators are missing. So, you try quickly to assign these roles to others, and now folks will do multiple roles. Great! It was never that bad, as described above, but it did happen numerous times. People accept their roles, they say they are coming, and then they don’t show up. Obviously, in reality, in our world this happens - sometimes something happens that takes priority. Sometimes it is a bad traffic. Sometimes we miscalculate time, when time changes in spring or fall. Sometimes there is some emergency. But, there were some people who did it more than twice, or even more than three times.
There were 57 "ditchings" in 2015. 26 different people “ditched” us, and 23 people didn't. 1 person ditched us 6 times, 2 people 5 times, and 1 person 4 times. There were also 4 people who didn’t show up 3 times, and 5 people 2 times.
In the big picture all of this is good as well. It gave us opportunities to improvise and to come up with impromptu solutions.
When I get bored of it.
If you were a toastmaster at Dawnbreakers you know that feeling: It is 6:55 AM, and your Sgt. at Arms hasn’t arrived yet (well, thanks to Peter Kossowan, the room is already arranged). Chairman is also absent, and even more, 2 out of 3 evaluators are missing. So, you try quickly to assign these roles to others, and now folks will do multiple roles. Great! It was never that bad, as described above, but it did happen numerous times. People accept their roles, they say they are coming, and then they don’t show up. Obviously, in reality, in our world this happens - sometimes something happens that takes priority. Sometimes it is a bad traffic. Sometimes we miscalculate time, when time changes in spring or fall. Sometimes there is some emergency. But, there were some people who did it more than twice, or even more than three times.
There were 57 "ditchings" in 2015. 26 different people “ditched” us, and 23 people didn't. 1 person ditched us 6 times, 2 people 5 times, and 1 person 4 times. There were also 4 people who didn’t show up 3 times, and 5 people 2 times.
In the big picture all of this is good as well. It gave us opportunities to improvise and to come up with impromptu solutions.
Conclusion
It was a great year. We've been improving in all areas. You really see the strength of our club when you attend other club's meetings. It is important that we maintain this high bar and actually go higher with it.
Also, this is just the beginning of this “data journey”, as we only have 3 years of data. We’ll be getting more information as we go, and future reports will give us better idea about club success. It will also set us up for better and more leveraged meetings in the future. I also hope that someone else will recognize this and invest his/her time to continue collecting and analyzing data.
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