I spent some time on Saturday adding the rest of the districts to my daily and weekly reports on the web site, and adding the “Top Three” of each Region V district (where I’ve known them personally for a long time) to the weekly e-mail list. Oh, it feels good to finally throw off the shackles of candidate campaign rules, which strictly limited contact! I actually heard that one past 3VP candidate went into a depression during the year of candidacy, since he or she was practically unable to talk to so many friends and fellow Toastmasters (no one outside the home district)!

Saturday evening started with a photo session of the new board. We were also given our committee assignments for the new year; I’m on the District Administration (DA) committee. Next was a reception for the District Governors. We then were lined up to march into the ballroom, where we were announced and took our places at the head table — it was truly an exciting moment to look out on what must have been a thousand Toastmasters! I was accompanied at dinner by my campaign manager, Joan Diehl, and we had an entire evening of interesting conversation (see photo).

One of my greatest privileges was to pin Dietmar with his Past International Director pin (see photo), and him to pin me with the International Director pin. International President Jana Barnhill had a wonderful inauguration speech about her theme, “The Courage to Conquer”, including some video of her skydiving! The total time up on the stage was almost three hours, but it just flew by, seemed like mere minutes.

The evening ended with dancing until late. I didn’t stay long, as I knew I had to be up at 7:30 AM for our board orientation Sunday morning!