Author: Mike Raffety

Candidate for Toastmasters International Second Vice President, 2011-12

Let the fall conferences begin!

Posted on (Updated: )

Yes, it’s that time already!  Just got back from the first one, District 11 (Indiana and northern Kentucky), and it was a good visit. This was the first district I visited last year during my campaigning (and also the first district conference I’d ever attended outside my own district!).

I drove down on Thursday evening after work (from Chicago) for dinner with the group, and on Friday, we had two marketing visits, one with a casino and one with a bank.  We were early for the casino meeting, so we spent a few minutes becoming more familiar with their product.  There were quite a few people gambling at 8:30 AM on a Friday.

The district presented their annual C&L award to Thomas Carroll, President and CEO of Lakeshore Public Television, the northwest Indiana public television station (PBS).  D11 has a very interesting membership promotion based on a football theme; you earn yards and points based on club activity, bringing in guests and sponsoring members, etc.  It’s generating some great excitement — District 11 has some real fire in their eyes and will surely be distinguished this year!

Unfortunately, I have been suffering from a pretty bad cold the last few days, I almost lost my voice, but fortunately, it wasn’t until after I had conducted my afternoon educational session on “The Courage to Conquer:  The Four Critical Success Factors”.  My meeting with the district leaders afterwards basically consisted of me listening to them, and croaking out a few words!

This weekend is my home district’s monthly DEC meeting (no official role there), and next weekend is my home district’s conference, so not very far either.  Two more in November, D54 (Champaign-Urbana, also close) and D8 (St. Louis).

Member sponsor reports

Posted on (Updated: )

As you may know, TI publishes a list of the members who have sponsored three or more new members for the year, in a big fat PDF with all the districts together.

I’ve added another feature to the reports on my web site, breaking out member sponsors by district, and by month as well.  My home district recognizes member sponsors on a monthly basis to keep membership building front and center on a frequent basis, and previously, this was manually done by reading through the PDF report (which can be around a thousand pages by June!).

You can see it by going to the reports page, clicking on a district, and then clicking on “Mem sponsor report”.  It will re-run any time the district reports change (usually Fridays), but TI only publishes the new numbers on a monthly basis, and that can be 4-8 weeks after the close of the month, since they must manually match up the sponsor names with member records.

Feedback and comments are appreciated!

What’s the most common club name?

Posted on

A comment at a division speech contest tonight got me to wondering. In District 30 alone, we have three clubs with the name “Speakeasies” (or some spelling variant thereof) as a key part of their name. There’s no requirement for club names to be unique — what are the most common names?

The most common words in the names of 11,766 active clubs are (with the number of clubs listed first):

9231 club
4961 toastmasters
477 speakers
459 of
381 the
223 city
171 communicators
170 talkers
155 toast
152 speaking
131 talk
130 masters
121 toasters
121 valley
111 speak
106 advanced
90 &
84 voices
75 town
73 county
66 and
66 orators
63 university
61 state
61 west
60 park
57 first
56 new
53 north
53 mandarin
53 bay

Hmm, looks like “Speakers of the City” would be a winner — but there’s no club with that name! Just interesting trivia.

More numbers — and graphs!

Posted on

I added a number of new report features over the last week or two:

1.  The weekly district performance report now includes a small bar graph showing progress on the four Critical Success Factors (CSF).  The newest version also includes a green line showing “now” as a percentage of the year.

2.  The district performance graphs adds a large graph showing how the divisions are doing with the CSFs (pro-rated based on the number of clubs in each division).  This is followed by smaller graphs showing the performance of the district month-by-month over the last four years, making it easy to see how you’re doing compared to past years.  These smaller graphs cover the four CSFs, plus the three “important” success factors (distinguished clubs and areas, and leadership awards), plus the distinguished district points.

3.  The Division Dashboard is another major new feature, merging area performance numbers from the Distinguished Club Program, Distinguished Area Program, and CSFs, all into one report.  District 30 is using this as the numbers core of the monthly DEC meeting reports from the Division Governors.  I’ve got more plans to develop this further with some charts.

4.  Last year’s daily/weekly reports were moved into an archive.  They’re still accessible if you click on the “2007-08” link at the bottom of the list of dates.

Enjoy — and feedback, particularly new ideas, is appreciated!

P.S.  Remember, you can get the daily or weekly district reports in an e-mail, just write me and ask, be sure to mention which district you want to see.

District visit schedule

Posted on (Updated: )

The district visit schedule has been approved.  I’ll be going to:

  • D11, Merrillville, IN, Oct. 10-11
  • D30, Elk Grove, IL, Oct. 24-25 (home district)
  • D8, St. Louis, MO, Nov. 14-15
  • D54, Champaign, IL, Nov. 21-22

I’m excited about D11 being my first official visit, as it was also my first-ever Toastmasters district conference outside my home district, and the first visit during my campaign year.  They’re all in driving distance too, so no airport hassles this time.

As part of each conference, I will present a keynote based on International President Jana Barnhill’s theme for the year, “Toastmasters: The Courage to Conquer”.  Every ID makes up their own speech; I’m going to structure mine around conquering each of the four critical success factors.  And I’ll make it a manual speech too!

At most conferences, I’ll also lead an educational session, something appropriate for each district, like staying distinguished, the DCP, club coaching, etc.

Perhaps the most important part of each trip is the marketing visits.  This typically involves meeting with executives from companies thinking about sponsoring a local Toastmasters club.  It can also include media visits, like television or radio or print.  And it can also include presenting an award to companies that have s history of strong Toastmasters support.

The goal is FIVE marketing visits for each district.  I’d love to see every district achieve and even exceed this goal!  Getting new clubs started early in the year makes the whole year go much more smoothly!

Clubs per country or state?

Posted on

If you know me, I love numbers (and people!). A discussion with someone at the Calgary convention made me think of some interesting analysis. (Based on the chartered clubs as of July 23, 2008.)

What countries have the most Toastmasters clubs — how much of them are overseas? (Click on the graphic to view full size and readable.)

Which U.S. states have the most Toastmasters clubs?

Which states have the highest number of clubs for their population size? (I.e., they have a lot more Toastmasters clubs than “normal”.)

State Clubs Population Per capita
Washington, DC 132 588,292 4,457
Minnesota 278 5,197,621 18,696
Hawaii 62 1,283,388 20,700
Washington 295 6,468,424 21,927
North Dakota 29 639,715 22,059
Montana 42 957,861 22,806
Oregon 153 3,747,455 24,493
South Dakota 31 796,214 25,684
Nebraska 65 1,774,571 27,301
Alaska 25 683,478 27,339

Or the least number of clubs for their population? (I.e., could be our biggest opportunities for growth.)

Rhode Island 16 1,057,832 66,115
New York 280 19,297,729 68,920
Alabama 63 4,627,851 73,458
Pennsylvania 162 12,432,792 76,746
Louisiana 50 4,293,204 85,864
Arkansas 29 2,834,797 97,752
Maine 13 1,317,207 101,324
Kentucky 40 4,241,474 106,037
Mississippi 26 2,918,785 112,261
West Virginia 13 1,812,035 139,387

Interesting stuff. And yes, it would probably be more useful to produce these statistics by district instead of state, but it’s remarkably hard to pin down the exact definition of a district’s geography, and then even harder to determine the population in the district.

Maybe gives us some ideas on where to focus our marketing, where we have the lowest penetration for the Toastmasters program — or the greatest successes!

What’s it cost to run for ID?

Posted on

Before I ever made a decision to run, I was cautioned by several people that it’s not cheap. There’s a lot of out-of-pocket expenses while running, and even some if you win the office (though TI reimburses a majority of those, once in office). Expenses may be tax deductible as a charitable contribution.

Here’s a spreadsheet with what my campaign cost. In summary, it was about $12,000, mostly due to attending 12 conferences (6 districts in the fall, 5 in the spring, plus regional), at almost $600 each (travel, hotel, registration, meals, usually two nights each).

Plus there was the international convention at the beginning of the campaign, and the convention where the election was held. Those were about $2000 each with travel, hotel, registration, and meals, though I probably would’ve gone to both of those anyway, even if not running. Since I won, TI will be reimbursing the return flight, some convention costs, and a couple of nights at the hotel.

Your costs might even higher, depending on what it costs to travel to the farther-flung districts in your region. Airfare can be quite expensive to small towns (though hotels can be correspondingly cheaper). You may be taking unpaid time off work, depending on your situation, and how much vacation time you have to use.  I always have weekends off work, but I took 12 Fridays off for traveling to the conferences (to be there for the Friday night activities), plus almost a week for each international convention.

If you’re thinking about running, be prepared for this. Even after winning, there are significant expenses and days off work. In Region V, directors traditionally visit every district twice (both spring and fall conferences), but only one of those is reimbursable by TI — the other one is out of our own pocket. It’s less travel than as a candidate, though, since the two directors split those, with each attending just four conferences each season (fall and spring), out of eight districts. Directors may want to visit districts outside of the conferences as well, again at their own expense.

For 2008-09 in Region V, it’ll be less travel than usual since our International President, Jana Barnhill, will be at the D54 and D22 spring conferences. Michael Smith and I will each attend three in the spring.

If you’re thinking about running, prepare a budget, be ready for the expenses, both as a candidate, and if you win. It’s a serious commitment in time as well as money, but very very rewarding!

Now it’s a REAL blog!

Posted on (Updated: )

Up until now, I’ve been writing this “blog” as a regular web page, with no opportunity for anyone to provide feedback. I’ve converted it to WordPress now, a real blog with a ton more features. It was much easier than I expected, and there’s so much more cool stuff that WordPress can do, highly recommended!

Please DO leave feedback, it’s much appreciated!

Board orientation, Calgary

Posted on (Updated: )

Standing on the glass floor 525 feet over the street at the Calgary Tower.They put us right to work, our first day on the job! Basically a broad-ranging overview of our responsibilities, confidentiality, district visits, corporate visits, policies and procedures, and all the day to day minutiae of the role. Nothing of substance. We’ll get involved in electronic discussions and conference calls as separate committees later on, in preparation for the February board meeting near World Headquarters in southern California.

This evening, we had an informal reception in the president’s suite, where we got to know our fellow board members a bit more informally over drinks. There’s an interesting tradition of the new third vice-president serving as bartender at board functions!

On Monday, I had a few minutes to go up the Calgary Tower before heading to the airport (photo at left). Check out the floor I’m kneeling on — yes, it’s transparent, and it’s 525 straight down to the street! Talk about the courage to conquer!

President’s Ball, Calgary

Posted on (Updated: )

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)!

Joan Diehl and myself at the President\'s Ball, where the board was installed.

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!