At CHIC Toastmasters Club in Beijing, we're always trying to provide tools to help with your creativity, humor and imagination.  This article introduces a tool that will stimulate all three.

This is a technique used in business to generate new product ideas.  The concept is elementary:  Begin the brainstorming technique by asking the  questions that starts with:

Who, When, Why, Where, How, What.

Once these questions are answered, you would continue to drill down with further detailed questions.  For example, in the example, the product is 'Skates'.  I would ask 'What kind of people use Skates'?  Answer: Skaters.  Next question: What kind of skaters should we target?  etc.

(image taken from mindtools.com)

In Table Topics, we can use this technique to brainstorm how we want to generate fresh ideas on how to tackle the question.  In generating speech ideas, you can come up with innumerable inspirational ideas based on any item.  such as TV (an item just in front of me as I am writing this article).  Who uses TV?  How is TV used?  Why do people use TV?  When do people watch TV?  Who do you watch TV with?  Any of these questions can lead to next level of questions, and jump start your inspirational speech.  People watch TV to distract them from doing work.  It is a means to procrastinate.  What else do we do in daily life that continues our procrastination?  What can we do to prevent this kind of behavior?

Hope this has been helpful for your next stint on stage

CHIC Toastmasters Club of Beijing