In addition to the standard meeting roles, Clubs are free to define their own special roles and meeting sections.

Some clubs have language games for helping members improve their control of the language, and they have a role called "Game Master" which is the person in charge of organizing the language game session for that particular meeting.

If you have nonstandard roles, please make sure that either the Meeting Leader or the people in charge of these roles explain their purpose at the beginning of the meeting, for the benefit both of guests and new members that might not know what these roles are about.

If you're the Vice President of Education of a club and you want to try out a new section, you don't need to ask permission from anyone to have a special role in your club meetings - just go ahead, test the waters, and see how it works. If, on the other hand, you're a club member or other officer, speak to your VPE and work together to implement it within the educational plan.

Whatever roles you want to define, never lose sight that the main goal of Agora Speakers is mainly educational, more than social. As such, all activities must be geared towards the education of members.

Also, be careful about not overloading the meeting with too many things. Meetings longer than two hours tend to become boring very quickly.  If your meeting is too long, you may start seeing people (especially guests) leaving in the middle of the meeting, which can be very damaging for the overall enjoyment and morale, not to mention very distracting.

Requirements for Custom Sections

As outlined above, all Custom Sections must:

• Have an educational purpose that is compatible with the bylaws of Agora Speakers International. Here are some examples of things that would not be compatible. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list.
  • Sections that go against the Core Principles of the foundation.
  • Sections that educate on a specific religion, or on religion in general (this violates the Neutrality principle. Even if the subject is Religion in general and not one particular religion, it still violates the Neutrality principle).
  • Sections that promote or revolve around a political party, ideology, or set of moral principles.
  • Sections that promote any kind of discrimination, intolerance, hate, violence, etc., or go against the Speech Content guidelines.
  • Sections that go against our official goals. For example, sections advocating or educating against technological progress or science, or against the involvement of the youth (of any age) in them, or against cultural exchange and openness, etc. are not allowed.
  • Sections that promote or educate about pseudosciences.
     
• Have a specific amount of time allotted to them, known in advance, and controlled by the Timer of the meeting.
• Have a clearly defined development that is known in advance.

If you want to implement a new section in your meetings but are unsure if it matches these requirements, please send us a note at [email protected].

Does it work? Share! It doesn't? Keep experimenting!

If you try out a new role or activity and you discover that it works, then drop us a note and share your experience so that we, in turn, can promote it worldwide to all clubs - we are always increasing the number and variety of activities and roles in meeting to better serve our members. Sections like Crossfire, Colloquium, and others were added as a result of member contributions.

If, on the other hand, the section doesn't go as well as planned - no worries. Maybe the idea needs some work. Apply the "Continuous Improvement " cycle and try again. Gather feedback, tweak the idea a bit, and see if, with those new changes, things can work better.

Meeting Role / Section template

To document a new meeting role or meeting section, please use the following structure. We use this structure both throughout the wiki and also in our online systems.

• Name of section  - For example, "Joke corner."
• Recommended duration and signals - How much time does this section usually last? At what times should the Green and Yellow signals be turned on?
• Difficulty - How difficult would it be for a club to organize the section? We have three levels:
  • Easy - Any club can organize it, even if it just recently chartered
  • Intermediate - The section is better suited for clubs that have been mastered the basic meeting agenda.
  • Difficult - The section requires stable clubs with regular attendance and good organizational capabilities (for example, a Debate section would be here, since it requires quite a lot of organization and participating people to carry out successfully)
• Online or physical-only?
• Core focus. Which of the four core pillars (Leadership, Communication, Critical Thinking, Debating) does the activity focus on?
• In club or external?  Does this activity happen within a club meeting, or outside of it? For example, an activity might require going to a science fair and doing interviews of people. This would be an external activity, even if afterward you need to present a report to the club.
• Detailed Description - Explain what happens in the section. Which roles do what, in what order, and for how long. Make sure to provide examples of interactions.
• Names of the roles participating. For example, "Joke master".  Some sections may require more than one role. Also, for each of the roles, indicate:
  • Preparation and Participation time. How much time does the person with that role need to prepare for it (before the meeting), and how much "stage time" they get during the meeting.
  • Difficulty - Is it an easy role that even a recently joined member can do, or is it a difficult role only for seasoned members?
  • Explanation  - How does the person having this role prepare for it? How do they carry it out during the meetings? Also, it's useful to provide tips, caveats, and especially examples.
  • Suggested evaluation criteria.  Each of the roles should have between 4 and 10 questions to guide the evaluators when providing feedback.
• Who evaluates the section? -  Does it have a special evaluator (like the Hot Questions Evaluator for the Hot Questions section), or is it performed by one of the general evaluating roles such as the Meeting Evaluator, General Evaluator for Speeches, etc.?  Remember that one of the basic principles in a club meeting is that almost everything (every role and every section) needs to get feedback in order to improve.
• Skills trained - Please indicate which skills do you believe this activity trains from our skills matrix.