Author: Mike Raffety

Candidate for Toastmasters International Second Vice President, 2011-12

Thursday morning: Hall of Fame

Posted on (Updated: )

The Hall of Fame is always a fantastic celebration of our achievements over the last year, the energy is so up and enthusiastic!  Every distinguished district brings their whole convention delegation up on stage for the awards!

I was privileged to be the very first announcer (photo below), reading off the Presidential Citations, and there were only NINE this year, compared to the usual 20-30 or so.  And two of them were for people from Region V, Michael Smith and Justin Gottfried.

Two of the Region V districts (where I’m from) were Select Distinguished, D43 (James Mayhan) and D8 (Dori Drummond), and three more were Distinguished (D30-Michael Gougis, D35-Kathleen Wesselink, and D63-Allan Daniels), which ties our best-ever number of distinguished districts (5 of 8).

Truly amazing — this is the event that district leaders worked for all year long, and they deserve it!

Thursday morning: Board of Directors briefing

Posted on (Updated: )

The board members were present for this, but had no role.  We sat there and listened as the officers (VPs and president and immediate past president) have reports summarizing our work for the week.  Full details will be on the TI web site by Friday, Aug. 20, but in short:

  • New area, division, and district recognition plan (effective 7/1/2012)
  • Numerous policy revisions, including campaigns
  • Big new strategic plan for growth!

I was heavily involved in the first one, so I’ll summarize those here:

Distinguished Area

  • Twice-annual AG visit reports for at least 75% of club base
  • No net club loss (this is a change)
  • At least 50% of base (July 1) clubs distinguished

Select Distinguished Area

  • As Distinguished, but 1 more club distinguished

President’s Distinguished Area

  • As Select, but a net growth of 1 club (same as now)

Distinguished Division

  • No net club loss
  • 40% of base clubs distinguished

Select Distinguished Division

  • As Distinguished, but 45% of clubs distinguished

President’s Distinguished Division

  • As Select, but 50% of clubs distinguished
  • Net growth of 1 club (same as now)

Distinguished District

  • 40% of base clubs distinguished
  • 3% club growth
  • 3% membership payments growth

Select Distinguished District

  • 45% of clubs distinguished
  • 5% club growth
  • 5% membership payments growth

President’s Distinguished District

  • 50% of clubs distinguished
  • 8% club growth
  • 8% membership payments growth

Perhaps the best feature is that the Distinguished District program is no longer competitive — EVERY district can be Select or President’s Distinguished, regardless of how other districts perform.

Announcement cards

Posted on (Updated: )

Finally wrapped up my announcement cards!  My campaign team will be handing those out after the convention is gaveled to close on Saturday evening, letting people know I’m running.  The basic stuff on the front, and on the back, I’m putting highlights from the Toastmasters calendar for the coming year, so it’s hopefully something useful that will be kept for reference.  My thanks to Stella Lorens for patiently making update after update for me, she did a great job!

All done today and it’s off to the printers, 2,500 of them to take to Palm Springs!

District maps?

Posted on (Updated: )

Over the years, many have inquired about maps by district, but unfortunately, precise definitions of district boundaries are hard to get.  As a sort-of approach, I did try mapping clubs for districts by ZIP code, and it does give you a feel for how the districts are laid out.  Here’s a couple of maps; the blank spots between blobs of color are ZIP codes with no Toastmasters clubs.  Click on a map for a larger version; the district number is there near the middle of the blobs of each color.

Southwest USA:

Northeastern USA:

More Toastmasters maps

Posted on (Updated: )

Here’s another map comparing the number of Toastmasters clubs in a state to the population.  Darker green means more clubs per 100,000 residents.  Interestingly, Minnesota (and generally the northwest USA) has the highest density of clubs, while the southeast has the lowest.  West Virginia has the lowest number of clubs per capita, and Kentucky and Maine are close behind.

This is as of 2007 census data, and July 2010 club data.  Unfortunately, census data for other countries is hard to get (not included with MapPoint anyway).

Mapping out Toastmasters

Posted on (Updated: )

Here’s some interesting maps showing how strong the DCP is by country, state, or province for several regions of interest.  The darker green, the higher average DCP score for each club in 2009-10.  Click on a map for full size.

US/Canada by state/province (Nevada and Quebec have the best-performing clubs, Wyoming and Vermont the most opportunity for improvement):

Europe (UK and Scotland are the strongest):

Australia by state (Northern Territory may seem strongest, but they only have two clubs!):

Southern Africa by country (District 74):

South Africa by province:

This was done using Microsoft MapPoint 2010, very interesting tool!

Treasure your loved ones every day

Posted on (Updated: )

My dog Buffy (9 1/2 years old, Samoyed) has been acting very lethargic the last few weeks, along with some nosebleeds and loss of appetite.  Tuesday evening, I found out she had an inoperable brain tumor.  Tonight, the veterinarian made a house call to put her to sleep.  I never knew I could feel such grief; my last personal loss was my grandfather back in 1995.

This photo was taken less than an hour before she went to rest.  She was on some very good painkillers her last day.  I wish I could have had some.

District hall of fame

Posted on (Updated: )

Added one more new feature to the district reports.  My own district needed a list of the distinguished divisions, areas, clubs, and educational awards for last year to use at the fall conference, so I wrote a little Perl script to do it, and as long as I was at it, ran it against the rest of the districts as well.  You can find it on the reports page on my site, after clicking on a district, there’s a link labeled “Hall of fame”.