The conference began with a Friday night fun night, with open dancing and a dancing demonstration; the emcee did a great job of tying in how dancing skills related to speaking skills. It was a great time to catch up with several old friends from a neighboring district.

The district council business meeting kicked off Saturday, where I discovered that D54 elects the Area Governors in the area councils (no nominations required district council approval). I always knew it was an option, but didn’t know of anyone that did that. This was followed by the opening ceremonies and a keynote from Ed Hearn (2006 world champion of public speaking from D30).

The Saturday luncheon started with the table topics contest (“What was your most inspirational moment in Toastmasters?”). Another thing that D54 does things differently is they alternate table topics (odd years) and tall tales (even years) for the fall season, along with the humorous contest every fall as well.

The afternoon had several educational sessions, including one from International Director Michael Smith, where he updated everyone on the latest planned organizational changes in TI.

The evening began with the humorous speech contest, featuring five very funny speeches. After dinner, the C&L award was presented to Don Wooten for his work as a radio and television celebrity, a state senator, and part-time journalist.

The Hall of Fame awards included some unique ones I’ve not seen before; D54 names a club president of the year and Toastmaster of the year in every area, and in every division (not just at the district level), and also an area governor of the year within each division (as well as district). They also have several other individual district awards for those showing the most commitment and dedication, parallels to the Toastmaster of the year award. All the winners were listed in a souvenir Hall of Fame booklet that was distributed right after the last award.