My first district conference away from home! I decide to drive down, since it’s under five hours each way (I’ll fly later to Nashville and Wichita). District 11 is being honored with a presidential visit from Chris Ford, and Friday night starts off with a full sit-down dinner.

Next is a very funny game called Gudentakken. Each table forms a team and is given a different made-up word and continent of origin, gets five minutes to create a convincing definition and selects someone to present it to the rest of the room. A panel of judges scored each, and we went through three rounds of words across the six tables. Much hilarity ensued! Between rounds, there’s a bonus trivia question. Somehow, Chris Ford’s table wins the game!

Lunch includes the hall of fame ceremony and the C&L award to Pat Byron for her work supporting rights for crime victims. This is followed by a great general session with Chris Ford on Leadershape. The mid-afternoon business meeting goes smoothly with my first two-minute campaign speech — the same length as a table topic!

While discussing my candidacy with someone and handing her my brochure, I realized that I had left my web site off of it! OK, well, good thing I only printed 100 of them!

The evening starts off with dinner, followed by the humorous speech contest (all seven speeches were great!). It also includes another brief address from Chris Ford, and finally, the contest results! The evening ends with a governor’s reception for Chris Ford. A wonderful start to my campaign, and I drive home on Sunday in a great mood all the way.