The member visiting another club brings a form, which can be obtained through here, enter whatever roles the member took at the meeting, get it signed by the visiting club officer, and list at least three things either unique about the club or what the member learned from them.  Each visit counts towards “Ambassador Points”, with bonuses for taking meeting roles, giving a speech and visiting a club that has yet to charter.

If a member submitted at least three visit forms, that person will be recognized as a Club Ambassador at an upcoming District 30 Conference.  The person with the most Ambassador Points by April 30th could be named Ambassador of the Year.

I would say that this is highly recommended for members who have given a few speeches in their home club and want to stretch out of the “four walls” of the club without competing in a contest.  Or for members who are curious about how other Toastmaster clubs work, either after completing all the meeting roles at their home club or serving as a current club officer.

The only thing I don’t like about this program is that Area and Division Governors are allowed to participate.  There are a handful of current Area Governors and at least one Division Governor that have visited multiple clubs outside of their responsibility even before they started their current terms, and have continue to do so this Toastmasters year.  That doesn’t encourage the rest of AGs and DivGs to compete and may even affect Area Governor or Division Governor of the Year awards, where visibility could triumph over meeting and exceeding their actual roles and responsibilities.

Anyway, I do commend Joan Moore for introducing this initiative to District 30 and would encourage Toastmaster members who have the time and curiosity to try this program out.

• For the first time in my 11 years in Toastmasters I don’t have any formal responsibilities as I’m no longer a club officer.  As mentioned in Twitter on the morning of July 1: “Free at last!  Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!”
• For the first time in my 11 years with the Arlington Heights Toastmasters Club, we were Presidents Distinguished!  North Suburban did achieve Distinguished Club as they did get some later renewals as a few joining the last couple of months.
• As far as District 30 events go, I may be less willing to attend them, less because the person I did not want to see District Governor got elected (his challenger went on attack mode and that turned off those who voted that were not involved in District 30 politics), but more due to being very disappointed with the last conference, the Winter TLI and some of the contests I attended.  It was the reason I did not attend the Summer TLI last month even though I was unable to golf since the beginning of June due to injury.
• I will however attend a roast next Saturday at the White Eagle in Niles, honoring the North, Northwest and Central North Division Governors.  Primarily for two reasons – 1) I want to support the organizer, past North Division Governor Steve Cerve, and Ted Przybylo, past North Suburban Club President whose family owns the facility; and 2) would like to see in particular how one of the Division Governors gets “roasted” as many knew who he was prior to joining Toastmasters.

So does that mean that I’ll be writing less frequently in my blog?  Hopefully not – I’ll still be an active member of two clubs, will be keeping an eye on how Toastmasters and District 30 is doing through LinkedIn, Facebook and directly from my contacts, and perhaps finally giving some speeches which I failed to do even though it was a goal of mine this year.  With a new District 30 Governor who has credibility problems, this Toastmasters year should be really exciting, if not enjoyable!

Attendance has slowed at the Arlington Heights club recently, though we had an actual club contest for the first time in a few years.  After going past 30 members prior to the April dues renewal, we are almost 20 renewed and it is possible we can have as many as 25 renewed altogether.  With 5 Distinguished Club points already achieved, we should get Distinguished Club status for this year (for the first time in 5 years).  With our Club President already finished his Competent Communicator requirements last week and several close to achieving their CCs and Competent Leader awards, we should be able to reach Select Distinguished Club!  Next challenge – find some members to step up and take officer roles in July.

North Suburban, on the other hand, has been struggling with attendance since last Fall.  Many who have joined within the last year stopped attending, few of which indicated they’re returning to school and don’t have time for Toastmasters.  The VP Education stepped down due to work and family demands and her assistant has been MIA.  A couple of key members devoted most of last Fall on the last District 30 conference as they were on the committee, and when they attended the club meetings were more focused on getting the members to go to the conference, which was close by, than getting them to attend the club meetings and work the program.  The Club President has been scratching his head and have been asking the longest serving member (28 years) and myself for some guidance – I suggested that there should be more communication with the members as I’ve seen very little, resulting in meeting agendas with plenty of open roles.  Attendance has picked up last month, now the question is how many of the current members are renewing.  I could see at least 14 out of 28 renewing, not sure if most of the others are planning to continue.  Not having a full-time Area Governor has made it more difficult – the original one stepped down, his replacement appeared to have stepped down after the Fall Conference, and now the original one is back in an acting role and he himself is competing in the Area Contest!

I have submitted my presentation proposal for the District 30 Spring Conference on using social media for Toastmasters, not sure when they’ll notify me on their acceptance.  Regardless, I should start preparing after Easter (when curling season ends) and get back to giving speeches, something that I planned to do this year that I failed to do so far!

One of my clubs also eliminated the printed agenda since the end of 2008.  It was more because the agenda can change radically a few days before the meeting.   What we have is a big blown-up version of a printed agenda along with the description of each role, covered in plastic to write a marker over so it can be erased and used again at the next meeting.

At a previous discussion here, many who commented did not seem receptive to this idea, especially as we don’t even have printed agenda for guests to take home.  On the other hand we give the guests a kit that includes a description of all the meeting roles.  And our club is now over 30 members with more than 15 new members since July after hovering around 12-18 the last few years!

It was Michelle Wee, last year’s Club President, that came up with this idea of no more printed agendas.  Her employer encouraged employees to limit their use of paper and she thought it could be something we try.

My own International Director, Mike Raffety, disliked this idea as mentioned in his reply:

Personally, I think a printed agenda is very important.  It gives people a place to write notes, and something to take with them.  I’ve saved agendas going back nearly to the beginning of my Toastmasters involvement, and I would be sad to see any of my clubs abolish them.

I don’t see 20 sheets of paper a few times a month as being significant, compared to the benefits of having them.

Side note: What’s on the BACK of your agenda?   Use that blank space — DCP progress, officer list, list of web sites, upcoming meetings, mentor/mentees, etc.

Well there were several years in which the Arlington Heights club went through a dry spell in which very few members signed up for roles and many who did pull out the last minute for whatever reason, leaving another role blank.  In that situation, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to show a guest an agenda with only a few names listed and many roles open – it gives the guest an impression that there is something wrong with the club and may rather join a club that has more participation from its members.

As far as back of the agenda as Mike mentioned, we did adopt that when I was the VP of Education for the Arlington Heights club a few years back (and it was Mike at my officer training who told me of this idea).  It is still a good idea, but it was during that dry spell in which many members didn’t really care about upcoming events whether it was the club contest or the district conference, or the web resources and the Toastmasters Promise that were also listed in our previous agendas.  If we provided something for years that most members and guests didn’t see any value of, that’s a message indicating it isn’t working and we should try something different.

My advice to clubs regarding meeting agendas would be to go with what works with your club, not necessarily what every other club does.  If you’re struggling with getting the guests to join your club, consider looking at the meeting agenda among the plenty of areas your club can improve on to get new members.

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…

Bruce (or Jinyu as he preferred to be called in the club – see the video below for an explanation) also gave his “My Name” speech as a target speaker the following Fall in the Northwest 3 Area Contest and the Southwest Division Contest (when I was the Division Governor there), and everyone cracked up at most of what he said.  I still remember Sporty King, who was the Toastmaster of the Division Contest, mentioning in jest at the start of the Division Humorous Speech Contest that “Bruce Jin has just entered the Humorous Speech Contest”!

Bruce also used his speech when competing for the Northwest 2 Area International Speech Contest in 2003, representing the Northwest Toastmasters Club in Elk Grove Village, where he lived at that time.  This was a club that all but disappeared from the District 30 map in 2001 as the club hasn’t paid their dues or submitted their officer list.  Both the Division and Area Governor for that club could not reach anyone who served in that club the previous year.  At the XL charter party in the Spring of 2002, as Area Governor I discussed with both the Club President and Bruce after the meeting to go over any possible educational goals that could be achieved for the 2001-2002 Toastmasters year.  Bruce mentioned that he was working on his 2nd CTM award and was giving speeches at his other club.  The District Governor and Lt. Governor of Education & Training were at the charter party and overheard that, so they went straight to Bruce and asked him what other club he belonged to.  Bruce gave them the names and phone numbers of a couple of people from that club who were running it, and all of a sudden the Northwest Toastmasters Club came back from oblivion and started participating in the Area and Division contests.  A week after the charter party I was at the Northwest 2 Area Contest and met the two ladies who stepped up to keep the Northwest club alive.  So in such a very short time Bruce made an impact in District 30!

Bruce and his family moved to Naperville in the Summer of 2003 and with that left the XL club as well as the Northwest club.  Sadly the Northwest club folded for good a couple of years later as the two ladies that were leading that club gave up on it after resisting help from District 30 to boost the membership (I heard they wanted to keep the club small for whatever reason).  I found out through the 2007-2008 District 30 Directory that Bruce resurfaced in Toastmasters with the Saturday Morning Workout club in Naperville.  In the fall of 2008, I heard he came in second in the Southwest Division Humorous Speech Contest and that was when I contacted him for the first time since he left the XL club.  He didn’t give his “My Name” speech but mentioned that had he given that he might have a better chance of winning.

I saw his name on last month’s Fall Conference program as one of the contestants and even put a tweet about not being able to see him give his speech.  After finding out from one of his club members that he was going to give his “My Name” speech (now titled “The Story of My Name”), I knew everyone was going to enjoy the speech and laugh hysterically, perhaps he could even win the contest.  Here is the video of the first part of the District 30 Humorous Speech Contest, with Bruce giving his speech starting at about 38:40:

Here is the second part, with Bruce being interviewed at 23:06, it appears he was representing the Beyond the C’s club, a recently chartered Advanced club that meets in nearby Aurora:

From what I remembered the previous times he gave this speech, he revised and refined it for this contest, thanks to those in his two clubs as well as others who have seen him compete in the previous levels.

The XL club invited him to give that speech at their Open House two weeks ago.  When he joined the XL club eight years ago, he was no different from the others who joined that club.  Now coming full circle by recently revisiting the XL club and having his speech shown online to countless others, he returned as a solid speech contestant known by many in District 30.

For publicity, we have a flyer for the event which we encourage members to post in a variety of places, such as eateries like Panera Bread and Potbelly’s.  We have a press release (with the help of the wife of our VP of Membership) that we sent to the local papers, not sure if they will be posted or published prior to the meeting.

As far as an online presence, we did update the club website to show the event, then afterwards we revert back to promoting the regular meetings.  In a June entry that I put in about becoming the VP of Public Relations, I mentioned “Find local websites to put a link to our club website” as one of the things we need to work on for PR.  Rich Hall, our current Club President, replied that he already implemented that for a while and has continued to do so for the Open House.  Here are some places Rich posted that can be easily accessed by our local folks:

http://chicago.craigslist.org/nwc/eve/1488832094.html

http://arlingtonheights.org/forum_posts.asp?TID=96976

http://eventful.com/arlingtonheights/events/does-public-speaking-make-you-nervous-/E0-001-026627961-8

http://chicago.kijiji.com/announcements/arlington-heights/does-public-speaking-make-you-nervous-arlington-heights-toastmasters/?ad=923600

http://www.adoos.us/post/9958333/does_public_speaking_make_you_nervous_arlington

http://www.when.com/arlington-heights-il/events/show/89450421-does-public-speaking-make-you-nervous-arlington-heights-toastmasters

http://www.freelistingsonline.com/?view=showevent&adid=2335&cityid=-14&lang=en&date=2009-12-09

If you belong to an open club, we encourage you to look at posting your club information and website at these places as well as your local-only event websites.  As Rich mentioned in his reply, it moved our club to the top of our local Google search.  It probably was a major reason why we’ve been attracting plenty of guests in recent months leading to the 15 new members!

The reason I want to take on the PR position is that I have some ideas we should try to implement to get more guests to our meetings.  The position is usually very neglected not only with the Arlington Heights club but in many other clubs here in District 30, so I believe I can do something to change that.  Some of the ideas I want to try in my club include:

• Put together press releases whenever we have an event or a member accomplishment, something we never did during my 10 years as a member.  This may be difficult as we only have the Daily Herald to submit releases to.  We used to have the Pioneer Press papers such as the Arlington Heights Post and the Rolling Meadows Review, but they ceased printing the beginning of this year and is just a news website.
• Enhance the club website, both to increase the number of guests to our meetings and as the primary resource for the members.  To use it as a publicity tool, I’d like to start putting in pictures of our meetings and our members (with their permission as there are those who are sensitive to privacy), plus add a page detailing what goes on in a meeting.  For members, I’d like to upload templates of worksheets we use, plus links to other Toastmasters-related resources.
• Find local websites to put a link to our club website.  Usually the website is accessed through toastmasters.org, however what if there are those who either never heard of Toastmasters or never thought of finding it through Internet?  Perhaps putting our club link at appropriate local websites can get more people who may not initially thought of us to take a look and realize that Toastmasters can benefit them.
• Putting together regular printed advertising – we only have done this periodically, usually when we have an open house.  I plan to put together different flyers that members can use to post in places with bulletin boards, such as Panera Bread or Jimmy John’s.  Plus I’m thinking about reviving the club newsletter, which we haven’t had in the last 5 years.  Previously the newsletter was for the members especially before we used e-mail and the club website around the time I joined.  Instead I’m thinking we should use it as a publicity tool and design the articles around the benefits of Toastmasters as well as profiling our members as testimonials.
• Look at regularly advertising in the municipal TV channels in both Arlington Heights and Rolling Meadows as well as in their respective city/village halls.  We did try that for an open house two years ago, in fact it brought a guest to the event who not only became a member but will be our next Club President!
• Work with neighboring clubs on doing joint and group promotion of Toastmasters.  One club can’t do this alone, getting a team of PR officers can do plenty.  I plan to contact incoming VP PRs of the neighboring clubs to see if we can collaborate on publicity.  With a new Northwest Division Governor coming in who is not a member of a division club, it would allow me to revive my involvement with the Northwest Division after a 2-year absence.

I’m looking forward to taking on this role in July and work with not just the Arlington Heights club members, but members of other Northwest Division clubs to boost our presence in northwest Cook County.

So for areas with winter weather, unless there is a major snowstorm or the meeting facility is closed, make every attempt to keep the scheduled meeting.  For some members who want to give a speech that meeting, it is probably the best chance for them to deliver it after practicing for days prior to the meeting, getting nervous prior to the speech and eagerly awaiting feedback for their performance.  Most importantly, there will be guests that find that day to be the best day to visit a Toastmasters club and not having a meeting can give guests a bad impression not only for the club but for the entire Toastmasters organization to the point they would not bother visiting any Toastmasters club again.  Even if there are only a handful of members present, the guests can learn more about Toastmasters from a small meeting than no meeting at all.

When I was the assistant Winter Toastmasters Leadership Institute Dean in 2003-2004 year, the current (2008-2009) District 30 Governor felt that her club had to have all 7 officers trained both for the summer and winter officer training.  She was their Club President at that time and the club has been know around District 30 as its #1 club because it held the longest consecutive streak of acheiving all 10 DCP goals (3 years at that time, now it is 8 years).  At one of the Winter TLIs she mentioned that one of her officers was being called to military duty during the winter training season, but she remained determine to get that person trained in spite of not being available to attend any of the officer training because she felt her club needs to reach that high of a standard to remain known as the #1 club in District 30.  I told her that there was no need to get that goal of all officers trained as they already reached their DCP goal for officers trained and I think getting all officers trained at whatever cost is not worth going through, both in that year and in the long term when no one really cares about that.  Well they found a way to have this last officer trained without going through a formal officer training session, assuming they did a 1-to-1 training instead.  I was very disturbed by this and vowed when I was the Winter TLI Dean the following year that I would block such a thing as it was basically designed to pump up the club’s numbers and nothing else.  Luckily this club did not try that attempt and was content with not having all officers trained that following year.

Whether it is for getting the DCP goal for officers trained or to get all officers trained for that period, it is must that the club goes through the proper channels to have their officers trained.  Club officer training is first and foremost for the benefit of the officers – reaching the DCP goal for officers trained or a club goal to get all officers trained should not be a high priority.  Years from now, does anybody really care if a club has all 7 officers trained both times in one year?