• 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!

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…

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…

I’ll probably continue to change the appearance periodically so those who often looked at this blog don’t get bored looking at the same thing over and over again.  Let me know if you have any suggestions on improving the blog, whether by submitting a comment or e-mailing me.