It’s been a while since I wrote. Besides my usual club meetings, I’ve been working with the “carry-over” International Director, Michael Smith, on the district visit schedule for the coming year. Also, I’ve been working on handouts for the District Governors at the international convention in a few weeks. I think I’ve come up with something quite unique and very valuable for them — and for their entire DEC. I’ll be posting the results on the web site here soon, look for them on the “Reports” page for each district.

Today I was doing the club president training for a downtown Chicago division, with 16 people attending. This sort of thing reminds me of just how great the people in Toastmasters are, and how fun it is to talk to a motivated audience. Everyone was excited about being a club president and had big plans for Distinguished. I was able to share a lot of useful ideas, and also heard some great ones from the group as well.

One of the most interesting bits was that on the evaluation forms, where the people who attended my session were asked to name two things that they would take away and use, is that practically everyone selected something different! Usually there’s a handful of things, 3-4 items, which everyone focuses on, but in this case, out of 16 people, there must’ve been 20 or more different “take-aways”. I think it’s a sign that everyone found something unique and specific to their situation, and that’s great.

I’ve been asked to do two presentations for the TLI, one breakout session to familiarize people with the “new” Toastmasters web site (though it’s almost a year old now!), and one general session after lunch about the DCP.

The web session went pretty well, I think a lot of people weren’t aware of all the resources available! My handout was a copy of the site map from the web site itself. Due to time, I didn’t quite get to all the club and district reports, but I think most of the people present were club officers, they’re only interested in their own club’s DCP progress.

The lunch session was much more interesting. There were maybe 150 people there, and I got to do my “living DCP” presentation, one of my favorites. The interesting part about this is that for each of the DCP points, I call up volunteers from the audience who fit the goal, and end up having composed an entire club with 10 DCP points!

I did this at our district TLI two years ago (when I was the LGET), and it was quite well-received, but this time, I had more time (about 40 minutes, instead of a hurried 10-15 minutes), and really got to explain it thoroughly. I received a huge number of positive comments, it was extremely gratifying. I hope a few more clubs will latch onto the “distinguished” idea and excel this year!

We also signed up four new members at my regular club meeting on Wednesday of this week, and another four new members at my advanced club on Thursday! The regular club was already fully distinguished, but the district needs more members, and having more than 20 is always good too. And I think I’ve earned another Toastmasters tie this year, too. Only two more days left until I’m a Plain Old PDG!

OK, I admit it … I’m a Toastmasters addict. Send me to whatever 12-step organization Darren LaCroix is in. I’ve been to seven Toastmasters events in nine days. Last Friday was a demo meeting for a large accounting firm (a lead I’ve been chasing for over a year!), while Saturday was a PDG meeting, plus our regular DEC meeting. Monday was a demo meeting with the Chicago Public Schools (IT staff), and Tuesday was the club I’m coaching (South Loop Speak Freaks).

Wednesday was a manual speech at another club; the president had put out a call for someone to come and explain/sell the officer roles, as she was having trouble getting volunteers. Thursday was my advanced club (Next Step), and today (Saturday), I visited the club I originally coached to distinguished back in 2003-04 (Unity). Unity has 7 DCP points, but needs 6 more members; I think two people joined today, though. They’ve been distinguished each of the last four years, and I’d hate to see that track record broken.

Plus, I’ve added a few more things to my web page reports. There’s the triple crown report (list of people who earned three or more educational awards in the current TM year); I’m amazed to see at least one person on another district has picked up TEN educational awards so far this year.

Also, the AG to-do list now includes district goals at the top, and each area lists clubs that don’t have visit reports filed (only in September/October/November, and March/April/May, when they’re important). Also, the program checks for updates on the TI web site repeatedly on weekdays, so updates come through ASAP, instead of just at noon.

Remember, by the campaign rules, my opportunities to reach out and initiate contact with people outside my district are very limited. Please feel free to e-mail me with any feedback or suggestions!

I had a question from someone about what you could do in Toastmasters outside the club, and it got me to thinking. Sure, there’s lots of things you can do, but what exactly are they? So I started a list — can you add more?

• Area and division contests
• District and region conferences
• International convention
• Leadership institutes and other officer training
• Charter and anniversary parties
• Demo meetings
• Visiting other clubs
• Holiday parties
• Speakathons

I’m on the District 8 Yahoo group list (something every district should have), and just got a message on there, announcing that the week leading up to the spring district conference is “Toastmasters week”, with every club asked to hold an open house, as well as reaching out to lapsed members to ask them to get involved again. The district is supporting it by running paid ads and free announcements in the media. Great idea!

The Past District Governor’s committee meeting was this morning. While a lot of things were discussed, the key observation we all had keeps coming back to something I wrote about in March 2007, “motivation times ability equals achievement” (see my District Governor column under “Resources” on this web site). There are certain leaders in Toastmasters who have been fully trained and know their job (ability), yet they lack the motivation to achieve. And that can happen for any number of good reasons, like priorities (such as family). But a key leadership trait is recognizing situations like this, and taking steps to ensure it doesn’t affect the mission.

The District Executive Committee meeting in the afternoon was good too. Several areas are very close to being distinguished already. But at the same time, we know some Area Governors have had other priorities, and the District Governor is not afraid to discuss that with them. Coincidental to the above theme, our club coach chair gave a pretty good educational session talking about why we’re all in Toastmasters, “what’s in it for me”, and what we can do to give back to something we all love.

I think club success can be summarized into three major steps:

1. Get guests into the meeting (PR, invitations, web site, etc.).
2. Show them a good meeting, so they can see the value of the program. Every meeting should be demo quality.
3. Ask them to join!

While doing a little Googling looking for something else, I stumbled upon a pretty interesting contest that D18 (Iowa) is running, it’s called a “Toastmasters Poker Run”. In short, you can collect cards from a special deck that’s been created and distributed, form a good poker hand, and win prizes. The smaller clubs get higher cards and larger clubs get lower clubs, encouraging people to visit the smaller clubs.

Area events (like contests) get the queens, division events get the kings, and aces are available at district events. Sounds like a great idea! More details on the district home page at http://www.district19.us. (Don’t forget to ask permisson from world headquarters if the Toastmaster name or logo is on the cards!)