I’ve never been too fond of the Chicago winters — I’d be quite happy to never see snow again! So I figured that a trip to sunny southern California for the mid-year board of directors briefing would be a nice way to thaw out. (Photo at right in front of World Headquarters today.)

There were about 70-80 people present, besides the board itself. I think the biggest news is that they won’t try to bring up any of the proposed changes for approval at the August 2008 business meeting in Calgary. It’s a huge package of changes, all intricately related, and with over 100 policies and procedures affected, it’s just not going to be ready in time. So that’s reduced the pressure a bit, the plan is to have it all ready for a vote in August 2009.

Other highlights from my notes:

• There’s a strong partnership with Caterpillar, where the Toastmasters program is being fully integrated into their corporate learning curriculum. This will be a great prototype to follow with other companies.
• Membership for the first six months is up almost 5% compared to a year ago, new members are up 8%, but new clubs are down 10%.
• Provisional districts 81P (Caribbean), 82P (India and Sri Lanka), and 85P (China) are being promoted to full district status effective July 1, 2008.
• A comprehensive evaluation program is being developed for district and region leaders (Regional Advisors, RAs) to provide feedback and promote improvement.
• No changes to the DCP for now, though they’re exploring how they might encourage new clubs and low-membership clubs to follow it better.
• The new District Governor-elect position will probably be responsible for the DCP for the clubs in the district (not just a pure understudy role to the District Governor).
• Aspiring district leaders will likely have a specialized “advanced leader” manual to follow, including the setting of personal development goals.
• The Distinguished District Program (DDP) will likely change to more closely integrate with the Distinguished Club Program (DCP). There’s also talk of eliminating the caps limiting President’s and Select Distinguished districts to six each.
• The plan for 15 regions has been reduced to 14, 10 in North America, and four overseas. Region V would probably be the same as it is today, except D62 (Michigan and western Ontario) will be added to it, making it truly international.
• The regional conferences will continue, primarily for the purposes of district officer training (though apparently these may be combined, two regions at a time, 14 seem to be too many), and speech contests. There won’t be any business meeting or elections held at the region level in the new plan.
• Jana Barnhill’s International President theme for 2008-09 will be “The Courage to Conquer”, and she gave a stirring speech about why this was important to her, and to Toastmasters.
• International President Chris Ford presented Immediate Past President Johnny Uy with several photo albums to remember his year by.

Full details from TI are here.

Afterwards, there was a time for socializing with light refreshments, and tours of World Headquarters. I had visited as LGET back in November, 2005, to meet some of the people I’ve been talking to for so long. That’s how I met Judy Chapman in Member Services, who has been invaluable so many times while I was serving District 30.