Installation
easy-Speak has evolved to be a full-scale portal providing easy delivery of specialised features for the various levels of the Toastmaster organisation from District through to Club.
Key features that are relevant outside a club are listed in this article. (For simplicity I shall say 'District' throughout this article - the comments apply at all levels)
All features may be used or hidden when the system is configured - so you could use an easy-Speak installation as a complete District website OR you could install it to deliver selected features as part of your existing site.
You may access any area of the system by using fixed links from your existing website (or your clubs' websites)
Officer Summary
The District directory displays contact information for all officer positions for all levels and allows the user to move up and down the levels between District and Club detail.
The current holder of each position is visible to all system users. Each officer's details are available by clicking on their name and they may also be contacted direct from the system by e-mail or Skype.
An officer in the existing structure may use this screen to assign next year's officers at all levels within their span of control.
An import facility is available to process data provided by Toastmasters International each July.
Normally a District installation will require a couple of District level Administrators to support the Clubs|Area|Divisions|District officers as needed, organise training and fill in any gaps - for example preparing for a District realignment in June and entering the District officers for the new year.
Run an e-mail-shot
District officers may send mailshots to all officers of a selected type (eg the Club Quality Director may mailshot and select all Division Directors, Club Presidents and VPE with one click) without having to know the latest e-mail addresses or check the membership list.
Find a Club
The use of Google Maps gives a visual method for site visitors to locate their nearest club and view a list of its neighbours.
Candidates Corner
If the software is supported for a District, a feature is available to display candidate profiles.
Candidates (or a computer 'buddy') manage their own profile which may include photographs, audio and video.
The system displays and removes Candidates Corner from the menu automatically using dates provided by the Nominations Committee.
When the election results are declared the winner's profiles are again displayed.
Conferences
The portal allows easy creation of multiple pages of information about each conference and provides an on-line conference booking facility.
Conference administrators manage the content of their own pages (which may have a different banner and style to the main site).
Data from on-line booking is then used for conference management (Badges, tickets, flight arrival lists etc)
The Treasurer's work is greatly reduced when payments are processed automatically (e.g. through PayPal)
Photo Album
The system allows any member to submit photographs to the appropriate photo album. These are made publicly available after review by an officer.
Style, Banners etc
All screens use a standard Cascading Style Sheet which may easily be changed during installation to match your preferred style.
Your default banner will be presented across the top of the screen to all users (a single image file is required)
Publish a calendar
A district-wide calendar will display all events entered by the clubs and also Area/Division/District contests, training and conferences.
Officer Training
You may use the system to administer officer training sessions at the District, Division or Area Level.
All club officers for all the clubs reporting to the unit running the training are automatically invited and all the features of agenda management, tracking attendees and sending e-mail to potential attendees are available. There is a facility to print name badges and to generate an e-mail listing actual attendance for reporting to TI.
If you permit it, 'Out of Area' attendees may request attendance and will be included in the attendance e-mail that is copied to their own Area and Division Director.
Provide a Knowledgebase of Information
The Knowledgebase provides a deep resource of information about Toastmasters and users at every installation may contribute to it.
The next development in the Knowledgebase will be to synchronise shared articles between all the installations of easy-Speak.
Content Portal
If installed as a complete website (or if configured to offer sub-sites to the clubs) the portal system offers a series of options to present content which can be managed by non-expert users from each Club, Area, Division and District.
The webmaster no longer has to manage all the changes - this is delegated automatically to the officers within limits defined by the webmaster.
For example, each Division Governor may create their own Division introduction and Welcome - or place news items about upcoming contests or latest educational achievements onto the portal pages for all their Areas and Clubs. This requires no more IT skill than sending an e-mail.
Links to Toastmasters International
A single screen provides many links back to Toastmasters International, and other summaries prepared from TI data, to present information about the District selected and sorted in a variety of different ways.
There are additional links on the club data screen to take the user to the current DCP status and DCP or Educational history for that specific club.
A single screen will summarise all officer training District wide with hotlinks to the venue and agenda for each of them.
A similar screen is presented for all contests above club level.
Configuration
The software is standardised and all configuration is via switches in a Control Panel. You decide which options to use and may still use updates and extensions to the programs as they are developed.
This is an open source project and new members of the development team are welcome.
Data Management for your clubs
...and of course each installation brings all the communications, agenda building, speech and CL tracking, mentoring, calendar management features of easy-Speak itself! https://easy-speak.org/kb.php?mode=article&k=9
At your service
The system is designed to be multi-club, multi-lingual and multi-timezone.
At present the available Languages are English, US English, German, French and some Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian and Romanian and I encourage the development of language packs for whichever language you would prefer to use.
Users may specify their own preference for date formats and timezone.
Getting Started
You may make this system available to your District without cost - it's my gift to Toastmasters.
Contact malcolmW via this site or using the e-mail address at the foot of the Toastmaster screens.
Malcolm Warden
Please explore the Knowledgebase for more information
An overview of the system features:
https://easy-speak.org/kb.php?mode=article&k=9
An overview of the system from a users point-of-view
https://easy-speak.org/kb.php?mode=article&k=39