Frequently Asked Questions

StenoMasters was founded in 2021 and is an online community for all stenographic court reporters, captioners, and students to practice the art of public speaking.  It will be chartered soon as an online club of Toastmasters International. 

Toastmasters was founded in 1924 and has 16,000 clubs in 145 countries.  For almost a century Toastmasters has been empowering people all over the world to improve their public speaking skills and to develop their leadership abilities.  Visit toastmasters.org to learn more.

We are mostly silent in the courtroom, at the deposition conference table, or sitting behind a computer screen captioning an event.  The StenoMasters club is a welcoming, supportive environment where we encourage each other to speak up and share our stories.  Public speaking is most people's no. 1 fear.  Through practice and preparation, we will carry greater confidence into the workplace and become even stronger advocates for stenograpy in front of attorneys, judges, and the consumers of our services.

Anyone is welcome to join StenoMasters.  The group was originally conceived with members of the stenographic profession in mind, but it is not exclusive.  Friends, family, and curious individuals are welcome to get involved.  We would love to have a mix of freelancers, state officials, federal officials, students, school admins, agency owners, retired reporters, and members of state and national associations.

Our meetings will be conducted online and follow the traditional three-part structure of Toastmasters:  (1) Table Topics which are impromptu one-minute responses; (2) prepared 5-7 minute speeches on any topic of the speaker's choosing; and (3) evaluations of the speeches which are 2-3 minutes in length.  

At each meeting, members sign up to perform various roles including the Toastmaster who is the MC for the meeting, a Table Topics Master who chooses a theme and creates questions around that theme, speakers, evaluators, and helpers such as the Timer and Ah Counter.  The meeting will probably last one hour.  

The answer is anything.  We certainly look forward to hearing speeches about steno, court reporting, captioning, school, speed-building, realtime, etc.  But speakers may speak on any topic of their choosing.

We currently don't have a schedule of meetings.  As of August 2021 this organization is brand new.  Please join our mailing list to receive updates.  We hope to get started very soon.

StenoMasters will be incorporated as a nonprofit.  As such, we hope to keep our dues very low, just enough to cover the cost of maintaining a Zoom Pro account and basic supplies like awards ribbons and other membership fees.