My 11th year in Toastmasters should be an interesting and challenging one, at least when it comes to my skills.  Here are some plans I have for this year:

  1. Submit a proposal for the upcoming District 30 Spring Conference to present a session on Social Media, in particular how LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can benefit Toastmaster members –  in particular obtaining information not found by their club and district leaders, as well as publicizing the organization to their friends, connections and followers.  If the conference committee are not interested, I hope this would be considered for the next Summer TLI.
  2. Plan to give more speeches as I only gave one in 2009 and that was for the International Speech Contest.  Some of the speech topics I plan to present are using Social Media, promoting Scott Berkun‘s Confessions of a Public Speaker book, the Tiger Woods scandal, and Curling, which is my new interest this winter.  I need to make use of the speech skills and experience I obtained throughout the years as I don’t have many opportunities to speak outside of Toastmasters, plus give speeches on topics that matter to me.
  3. Avoid being a club officer after June 30th – I haven’t done much as the Arlington Heights‘ PR officer, so my goal should be the lay the foundation for my successor to build on.  The club is doing well with membership so we should not have a dearth of members who are willing to step up and become officers for the upcoming term.  While I plan to remain a dedicated Toastmaster member for my two clubs, my days of being heavily involved in the clubs should long be over and I need to move forward in becoming a more well-rounded Toastmaster member, especially with speaking.

There may be more things I plan to do for this year, I’ll post updates throughout the year.  I’ll continue to update the blog on a variety of Toastmaster topics, including observations on District 30 and Toastmasters International.  So stay tuned…