Lessons Learned

Tim Bolger, who has been our video cameraman for some of the District 30 events the last 3 years, has put some recent videos online at Motionbox.  Events include the last District 30 and District 54 Spring Conferences (the D54 one has a visit from then-International President Jana Barnhill), the last D30 Summer TLI and the recent Northwest 1 Area Contest (under “Speech Contests”).  He even has videos from 5 years ago in his Fox Valley club about a group presentation on job hunting.

Tim is not necessarily reliable (see the beginning of this video, in which he promised that the videos will be online before last June’s Summer TLI but were only up yesterday), but most of his videos are decent quality for an amateur and he is very dedicated to his work.

After a month’s absence from blogging, I’m ready to get back and put in some entries.  We’ve just ended the Area Contests (BTW, no I didn’t win my Area Evaluation Contest), the Division Contests are under way and dues renewals just concluded.  The District 30 Fall Conference is less than a month away.  And hopefully I’ll finally get some PR work done for the Arlington Heights club with our planned Open House on December 9th, though it hasn’t hurt that we’ve signed up over 10 new members the last couple of months!

I’m hoping to put in posts more often, not just the “op-ed” type pieces that have been typical here.  As many of my Facebook entries have to do with Toastmasters, perhaps I should copy some of them here as there are many members that don’t use Facebook or don’t want me to be their “friend”.  I usually post in Facebook what I did in the club meetings, links to other blog entries, podcasts and news, plus some quick observations.  So stay tuned…

Having done plenty of evaluations over the last ten years, you would think I am a master when it comes to doing that.  Well it turns out that I need to make some improvements.  And I hope to get my act together by the Northwest 4 Area Evaluation Contest on October 8th in which I’ll represent the Arlington Heights club.

As the Arlington Heights club did not have an Evaluation contest due to no one there stepping up to compete, I volunteer to represent them in the Area Contest as I’d like to give the contest another try – the only other time I competed in that contest was in 2003 and I couldn’t even get past the club contest!  After I volunteered late last month, I had a couple of evaluation opportunities at the North Suburban club this month, including tonight’s club contest (members in more than one club can compete in more than one club contest but only in one Area Contest).  I realized both times that I have one primary problem when giving evaluations – I tend to say some of the same things over again as I worried about not having much to say.  Usually when I write some notes for an evaluation, I’ll put down up to three good points about the speech and up to three areas of improvement.  So during my time giving the evaluation, I ended up repeating some of my comments about what is great about the speech and perhaps repeat an area of improvement.  As a result, the two evaluations took more than three minutes, the first ended up approaching four minutes, which would result in a disqualification if it was a contest.

So my challenges now on giving evaluations would be to state my points about the speech without repeating them and no summarizing the speech apart from the start and end of my evaluations.  Chances are that should be enough to give a two-minute evaluation as I normally don’t speak fast so I should no longer worry about speaking too little.  I have two more opportunities to give evaluations prior to the Area Contest, one next week at Arlington Heights and one the following week at North Suburban, so I can not only be better prepared for the Area Contest but be a better evaluator in general.

Well Proposal A did pass with the required 2/3 majority.  As we move on to make the new International structure work, I noticed during my Saturday visit to the Convention a few things that perhaps Toastmasters International should look at for future conventions for their plans to be a success:

• Location – Probably the most important issue TI needs to look at.  This year’s location at Foxwoods is not near a major city or an airport, in fact attendees had to choose between flying to and from Hartford, Providence, Boston, New York or Newark.  The convention site is not within walking distance and has no public transportation to allow attendees to visit other places to go sightseeing, to eat or to stay over in another hotel (for those who were unable to reserve a room at the site or want to find a cheaper alternative).  I hope TI doesn’t bring the convention back to Foxwoods or other remote locations where the attendees are basically stuck at and make sure future conventions are at places where public transportation as well as alternative accommodations and places to go are easily accessible.
• Venue and fees – TI wants to place their conventions at a five-star hotel to show others what a world-class organization it is.  But is that what the average member wants?  Having the convention in a five-star venue cost lots of money that is passed on to the attendees resulting in exorbitant fees that many can’t afford.  Only 13 from District 30 attended this year’s convention, far less than the average.  And I’m sure most in D30 who would’ve loved to attend this year’s convention couldn’t because they either couldn’t afford it or was not worth the convention, lodging and transportation fees to go.  Many districts however are finding ways to cut costs at their conferences and are willing to hold them at places that are beneath the quality of a hotel, such as a college, in return for more attendance due to the lower price to attend.  Perhaps TI should look at what the member values at an International Convention and ask them how much they are willing to afford to go to one and what venue standards they are willing to accept.
• Voting at the Annual Business Meeting – In the aftermath of the vote on Proposal A, many are calling for electronic voting to at least be an option for Club Presidents to directly vote on such proposals and candidates for International Office, especially as most can’t attend a convention for reasons above or may not trust their District Governor with their vote.  Many organizations such as IEEE and just about every public company allows the member/shareholder that option.  For LinkedIn users, there is a great discussion on electronic voting in The Official Toastmasters International Members Group.  Hopefully there will be a solution soon that would both enable the Club Presidents to directly have a say on the issues and candidates while continue the tradition of allowing the candidates for face-to-face presentation and discussion that showcases their Toastmaster skills.

If Toastmasters International thinks the hard work is done by the passage of Proposal A, they should think again.  It’s only the beginning and they have a long way to go to make the proposal a success, especially as they’re giving the International Convention much more importance than ever.

Last Friday I received a call from a close Toastmasters friend who was asking me about proxies for the XL Toastmasters Club, which I was formerly a member of.  I mentioned that it appears District 30 is desperate to have all the clubs turn in their proxies.  The answer is obvious, we have a candidate, Dietmar Wagenknecht, running for 3rd Vice President of Toastmasters International, with elections to be held next Friday at the Annual Business Meeting in Foxwoods.  It is understandable that D30 wants 100% participation as the race could be tight and every vote counts.  Last year, Michael Notaro was elected 3rd Vice President by FOUR votes over John Lau.

However, I also mentioned to my friend that I don’t think Dietmar is going to win, in fact it would not surprise me if he lost big in the 3rd VP race.  Why would I say that about someone from District 30?  Someone who I think highly of?  Someone who made great contributions to District 30 and to Toastmasters?  The person who named me District 30 Toastmaster of the Year?

It has nothing to do with Dietmar.  It has nothing to do with Ralph Wallace, the other nominated candidate for 3rd VP.  It has to do with John Lau and the way the nomination process was handled by Toastmasters International.

John Lau wanted to run again for 3rd Vice President for the 2009-2010 year.  This past winter, Toastmasters International sent out the International Officer Candidate Survey for the Board of
Directors, past Board members for the last two years, Past International Presidents, current District
Governors, and Immediate Past District Governors.  The respondents list preferences for each of the four International offices, with the 3rd VP position being the lowest and the most contested.  John Lau reportedly received more than 70% of the votes for 3rd VP, the next candidate received less than half of that vote.  Dietmar Wagenknecht came in 4th place with less than a third of John Lau’s votes.  Ralph Wallace, based on a blog that has since shut down, came in 6th, though Past International Director Jenny Pagano claimed that he was not campaigning for the office when the survey took place.  And John Lau was not nominated, neither the 2nd vote-getter Margaret Wan nor 3rd vote-getter Kathy Miles.  It was Dietmar the 4th place candidate and Ralph the 6th place candidate.

Nobody outside of the Toastmasters International Nominating Committee knows why they made these selections.  And virtually everyone outside of District 30 and 23 (Ralph Wallace’s district) finds this hard to comprehend.  How come someone who nearly won the 3rd VP race last year and received overwhelming support from past and current Board and District officers not get nominated this year?  With the Nominating Committee prohibited from unveiling the decisions behind the nominations, we can only speculate.  Jenny Pagano thinks race and gender played a part in the process.  She also wrote a letter recently that mentioned some past indiscretions supposedly made by the committee.

Understandably there is an uproar over the selections.  What is the point of these surveys if Toastmasters International seems to ignore them?  Are they listening to the will of the members or are they only care about their own interests?

Well John Lau is running from the floor for 3rd VP.  And among those who were surveyed and give John 70% of the vote are current District Governors who will be carrying most of the votes for their districts.  While John won’t be part of the candidate program distributed at the International Convention, he will have his own candidate table and take part of candidate interviews.  And since most of the current District Governors were at last year’s convention in Calgary, especially as they were part of Top 3 training that TI started that year for International Conventions, they already are familiar with John Lau’s candidacy when he came close to winning that year.

One other thing to consider and it may be the pivotal factor in the 3rd VP race is Proposal A, especially with the International Leadership Committee.  The ILC is basically expanding the nomination process of the Top 4 International Officers to International Directors.  Many, including myself, fear that the supposed bungling of the 3rd VP nomination process this year could be compounded if similar situations take place with International Director races, perhaps several in one year.  With many prominent Toastmasters opposed to Proposal A, those who will be delegates next Friday can send a huge “eff you” (thank you Bill Simmons of ESPN.com) message to Toastmasters International by voting for John Lau and disregarding the nominated candidates because TI disregarded their views and wishes, in addition to voting down Proposal A which can cause further disenfranchisement.

As a District 30 member and a good friend to Dietmar Wagenknecht and his wife Heidi, it would be great to see him get elected 3rd Vice President of Toastmasters International.  But if I was one of the more than 70% who was surveyed that preferred John Lau for 3rd VP, I’d be steamed as well and take it out on the ballot box.  It would be impossible for me to keep an open mind if my opinion and with those of the huge majority are ignored.

After paying attention to the issues surrounding Proposal A the last five months and commenting them on LinkedIn and my Facebook page, I’m sure you want my opinion of this.  I’ve been reading both the pros and cons of the issue, hearing from those who have criticize the proposal as well as those from Toastmasters International, in particular a couple of board members who have chimed in on LinkedIn.  In addition to reading what Toastmasters International has put out in support of Proposal A, as well as the LinkedIn discussion, I also urge you to read a couple of letters by past International Directors Jenny Pagano and Jim Smith expressing concerns about this proposal.

I admit that part of what got me interested in this discussion is that the tactics Toastmasters International and its board used in promoting Proposal A reminded me of a set of tactics a past District 30 Governor and Lt. Governor of Education and Training have imposed on other District 30 officers in which there was no transparency, no input from the rank-and-file, and a possibility of a large schism between the leaders and the members.  I was going to write an entry about this as a reason to oppose Proposal A, but now I think I’m better off directly addressing the issues I have with this:

1. Best and worst case scenarios – While TI has mentioned what is great about implementing the proposed changes and claimed they used their own figures to justify them, there is always a possibility that things may not go well as planned.  As a software engineer, whenever I have to add new code or fix bugs, I have to look at not just the ideal or expected way to input and interface with the code but also look at how the code handles an error or an improper input so the program would not crash or cause problems.  TI has done very little in addressing what could go wrong with what they are proposing and whether the potential problems can keep the proposed system better than the current system.
2. Consolidating all District Top 3 training – In the past at least those who belong to a Region could attend a different Regional Conference if they are unable to attend their own Regional Conference for their training.  Now that it is all in one week in August, what would happen if a Top 3 officer is unable to attend?  I remember in 2006, the District 30 LGET couldn’t attend the International Convention in DC due to work demands, so it could happen very easily.
3. Costs – TI has not unveiled the costs of keeping the current Regional and International conventions vs. the new plan of consolidating speech contests and training to International – especially with paying all or some of the costs the speech contestants and the Top 3 District officers.  What if transportation costs, especially gasoline, skyrocket?  What if we have another 9/11 in which airline service can be suspended during the conventions?  Can the convention site adequately house all the 70+ contestants and the 200+ Top 3 officers along with thousands of other attendees, and are there neighboring hotels that can be used?
4. Interational Leadership Committee (ILC) candidate survey – This year, many considered the candidate survey to be a complete joke – one 3rd VP candidate, John Lau, received more than 70% of the survey vote and was not nominated for that position, while the 4th and 6th vote getter were.  Will the ILC take the candidate surveys seriously, or the scenario that apparently took place this year could happen again?
5. ILC candidate search – What if the ILC cannot find candidates?  Is it possible they can resort to “bullying” tactics if they were desperate to find someone?  That could be embarrassing to TI as the ILC was formed to find candidates to fill the officer roles, especially International Director.
6. ILC recommendations – Can the ILC set up recommendations or have any authority to make it easier for candidates to run?  What appears not to be addressed by TI is why there are so few candidates for each of the International Director spots and try to remove barriers that may prevent a potential candidate from running for office.
7. Region Advisor Marketing (RA) – If the RA conflicts with districts or the Board, what steps can be taken to resolve them?  TI can’t just assume that the RA can easily work with each of the Districts in a Region as each District and its leadership can be different.  Even neighboring districts can be radically different.
8. RA selection – Can the Districts in a Region have input on who should be selected as their RA?  It does not say in their FAQ.  Plus for the RAs to work well with their Districts, they should visit them at their conferences and other events prior to their selection, which can cost them plenty of money with no assurance that they will be selected.

I am not convinced that Proposal A can address the problems regarding costs of running their events, recruiting candidates for International office and serving the needs of the Districts as well as the members.  The way the Board of Directors unveiled this proposal is abysmal – they never publicize any sessions or any way for members to give input on how to fix what’s wrong, then when they unveiled this proposal they should have given more details as to why they came up with their decision.  They should have unveiled comparison of costs between the current system and the proposed changes as well as how the ILC is better at recruiting candidates than the current process, in an ideal situation and especially in some worst-case scenarios.  They also should have explained alternatives that they considered and why they were not used.  TI has done a poor job in addressing the complaints regarding Proposal A and have not given adequate examples of why this proposal can address these concerns.

With that I recommend a NO vote.

Sorry I haven’t updated the blog in a while.  Here’s an update about my Toastmaster stuff since July 1:

• Haven’t done much with publicity since taking over as VP PR.  Started to add files in the Arlington Heights club website and contacting nearby VP PRs to break the ice and see what they need.  Probably is going to be hard to get together until September due to summer vacation for several folks, including myself.   I’ll try to get a few things going the next couple of weeks.
• Will be at the Toastmasters International Convention at Foxwoods on Saturday morning to watch the World Champion of Public Speaking.  As I indicated in an entry last year, my 20th high school reunion will take place that evening on Long Island and will be in the area most of that week.  For those outside of Chicago that are reading this blog and will be at Foxwoods, I look forward to meeting you.
• Will try to get at least a couple of entries within the next couple of weeks, in particular regarding the upcoming changes and elections coming up for vote at Foxwoods.
• I recently joined Facebook due to my high school class reunion and have been checking their Toastmasters International Members group occasionally and mentioned some of my experiences and views on my page.  Already have several members outside of Chicago connected as friends.  Feel free to send me a friend request here if you have a Facebook account.

One Toastmaster blog that I’ve been checking often is one created by Lynn Thomas, the new District 30 Public Relations Officer.  It has some press release examples and she’s planning bigger and better ways to promote Toastmasters here in Chicago.

This is going to be an interesting year in Toastmasters, both at the International and local levels.  Looking forward to seeing what will happen.

Last weekend, the Horseshoe Casino Classic took place at Lost Marsh Golf Club in Hammond, IN.  It is a tournament on the Duramed Futures Tour, the developmental tour for the LPGA, with the women golfers competing in the hopes of making it to the big tour.

Two years ago, I took advantage of an interesting opportunity presented by District 30 – serving as a guest starter for that tournament in which I announced to the crowd who will be teeing off.  District 30 started working with the tournament’s organizer, the Chicago Festivals Association, the previous year with the 2006 State Street Thanksgiving Day parade, where many from District 30 served as street announcers.  We used that opportunity to give exposure to Toastmasters to those attending the parade, give our volunteers a chance to showcase their speaking as well as entertaining the crowds.

In April 2007, the District 30 Public Relations Officer sent out an e-mail about the opportunity to serve as a guest starter as well as other volunteer positions for the Futures Tour event.  At that time I was nearing the end of my involvement in District 30 and was looking to explore different interests, volunteering at golf tournaments was one of them.  So I jumped at this chance, thinking that I could be like Ivor Robson, the legendary British Open/Open Championship starter, for a weekend.  As it turned out I was the only District 30 member that was willing to volunteer for ANY role in the tournament – I noticed that very few avid Toastmaster members are golfers.  In fact, of the one thousand or so District 30 members I’ve known throughout the years, I could think of about two dozen members who I consider avid golfers.  I only heard two contest speeches, both humorous, where golf was the main subject and they happen to be about neophyte’s view of the game and about being a young caddie.

So on the second weekend of June 2007, I did serve as a starter for the first two days of the three-day tournament, making the hour-long trip from the northwest suburbs to Hammond, IN, showing up for both the morning and afternoon tee times.  The tournament had players starting from both 1st and 10th tees, which are next to each other, and there was one of the local pros that also served as a starter so one announced the groups teeing off from the 1st while the other announced those teeing off from the 10th (I announced the 1st tee groups on Friday and 10th tee groups on Saturday).  It was more than just announcing the names – I presented the players scorecards, explained some tournament rules that were adjusted for a particular day, even asked if they wore a particular shoes and spikes as the Futures Tour had official sponsors for such items.  With many foreign players and others with questionable pronunciations, I also asked the players to about their names to make sure I get that right when announcing.

It turned out that I was able to announce every player’s name correctly and had no major hiccups when making each announcement.  I did not feel nervous, though the crowds are much smaller than those of the PGA and LPGA events.  After my work was done, I was willing to stick around and help out with other tournament roles, including verifying scorecards of the players after their rounds were finished.  On Sunday when I did not serve as a starter as a local announcer was performing that role, I even served as a standard bearer (or “Sign Boy” for those who remember those FootJoy commercials with Matt Griesser) for one of the final pairings.

I thoroughly enjoyed this unique experience.  Not sure if we were given opportunities to work on last year’s and this year’s tournaments, I would have turned them down if I was given the offer to be a guest starter again as I’ve been estranged from District 30 since that time.  It was one of the stepping stones that got me further involved in volunteering for golf tournaments, working as a marshal on a few PGA Tour and its developmental Nationwide Tour events.  This year I’ll be working as a marshal at the Solheim Cup, the women’s version of the Ryder Cup, which will be held west of Chicago next month.

While most of the golfers I know and am friends with play much better and/or been to more golf courses, I don’t think anyone will ever get the experience of serving as a starter for a golf tournament.  And I have Toastmasters and District 30 to thank for this opportunity.

There were times in which I did not take some facts well and expressed them emotionally, like the more recent entries here such as changing the contest room or finding the results of a recent election unfavorable.  At the end, it was a set of facts that I accepted, whether I like it or not, and I tried to learn something from that and move on.

Now what if there was a decision made based on facts which resulted in an ENTIRE district going in an uproar?  It just happened recently in District 21 in British Columbia in which the District International Speech Winner was disqualified to compete in the Region I contest.  Why?  Because it turned the speech winner, who was out of Toastmasters for years, returned to her home club on the night of the club contest to rejoin and was asked by her club to compete that night.  What is wrong with that?  At the time of the club contest, the speech winner was not considered a member in good standing with that club because Toastmasters International did not receive that person’s application until after the contest.  The contest rules mentioned it very clearly under Eligibility in page 9:

Be a member in good standing of the club in which he or she is competing.  The club also must be in good standing.  A new, dual, or reinstated member must have dues and membership application current with World Headquarters.

Maintain eligibility at all levels of any contest.  If at any level it is discovered that a contestant was ineligible to compete at any previous level, the contestant must be disqualified even if the ineligibility is not discovered until a later level and has been corrected.

This is similar to what I’ve seen in District 30 as mentioned in an earlier blog entry.  And just like in that entry, the D21 winner was hurt by the decision made after the District Contest.  In this case as she won the contest with a speech that many seemed to both rave and be touched by it (here is her speech at her Division Contest), it appeared everyone in District 21 is up in arms.  Both the D21 conference website and Facebook group page, members took their anger at WHQ believing that yes there was a mistake but it was not the contestant’s fault at all and should be given the chance to compete at the Regional Contest.  One went as far as saying in the Facebook group: “This is yet another example of TMI turning into another faceless corporate entity and the new Governance Model that they are unveiling will further erode the voice of the individual members.”

Unfortunately the members of District 21 based their comments on emotions rather than facts.  They’ve seen someone who deservedly won their District Speech Contest and now with that winner cannot continue, they felt they were unfairly screwed.  Those outside of D21, even those who have seen firsthand similar disqualification stories, looked at it through facts such as the discussion in the ToastmastersPrime Google group.  It was something that could have been prevented at any level, whether it was the contestant, the Club Contest Chair, the Area Contest Chair, the Division Contest Chair, the District Contest Chair, but perhaps they either were not aware of the rules or misinterpret them.  Perhaps because the contestant was returning to TM, the contest chairs and others in D21 only thought of encouraging her to go on as she’s been through a lot in her life.  We could easily blame any of them for not doing their jobs.

Rather than pointing fingers, I think we should let the folks in District 21 accept that something bad had taken place that could have been avoided and look at what they could do in the future to not let this happen again.  And I hope these folks will put aside their emotions and learn the facts that cause this unfortunate situation to happen, hopefully before their Fall Contests start.  It is a lesson to be learned for not just District 21, but for every member and officer in Toastmasters.

The debate regarding Proposal A and other recent issues from Toastmasters International rages on, in particular on the LinkedIn Toastmasters International Members group, which even had two International Directors actively participating.  For the most part, the debate was very civil and those who have issues with the proposed changes came away with a lot more respect for the two IDs who took the time to answer their issues and problems.

Susan Ellsworth, one of the loudest critics of the proposed changes, recently put in her website a letter from Jenny Pagano, a Past International Director, expressing her concerns and stated her opposition to many of the changes:  http://www.pequodsystems.com/toastmasters/pagano.pdf.

I already notified a few District 30 officers I’ve contacted on a regular basis and ask them to forward this link to others.  Unfortunately this is going to fall on deaf ears on the Top 3 and the Immediate Past District Governor as the letter mentioned her take on the nomination process for 3rd Vice President and may give an unfavorable view of Dietmar Wagenknecht as someone who benefited from what was considered a poorly handled process.  The Top 3 and the IPDG have had a tendency to avoid controversial and challenging issues and would rather not hear such concerns or anything that they consider unfavorable.  Too bad for them they cannot prevent District 30 members from accessing such information online.  I’d go as far as to say that Dietmar will be far more receptive to Jenny’s concerns than the current District 30 leadership as he’s been willing to listen and address many controversial and challenging issues over the years.

I have my own concerns regarding the proposed changes, which I may present later on before the International Convention.  I may not agree with everything that Jenny wrote but I think everyone in the leadership part of Toastmasters needs to know what is going on with Toastmasters International and hear all views and from all sides.