Thursday morning: Hall of Fame

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

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.