Getting Started

Okay, I have just agreed to give a presentation at the June 28 Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI) on blogging and webcasting for a Toastmasters club. Now all I have to do is sit down and figure out how exactly to do this when one is starting out from scratch.

The problem is that it has been so long since I set this up that I forget what things I went through to get started. Plus, since starting this, blogger.com has been purchased bu Google. So this will help me document the steps that can be taken.

I plan on documenting my preparation of this presentation here, and also use this as part of a live demonstration during the presentation.

I posted the first entry for NPS Toastmasters on October 3, 2006, a text recap of the previous meeting. The motivation for this was less from a technology standpoint or coolness factor, but as a means to reduce the amount of space due to the e-mail attachments Carl was sending as part of his meeting recaps.

Adding photos was inspired by a former member, Fumie Nakamura, who sent use some pictures from the Sudan, where she was working with a UN group. Again, rather than spamming people's mailboxes with the photos, I decided to put one on the blog and have a link to the rest.

The first multimedia blog was a "hipcast" from then-Sergeant at Arms Glenn Tolle from his cell phone. The first video posting was in March 2007, and consisted of two speeches from our monthly speech-a-thon.