David Nicholas DTM

Clubs in our District 17 are organised into Areas and Divisions. There are 3 Divisions – Central with 4 Areas, Northern with 4 Areas and Southern with 5 Areas.

The 3 Division Governors for next year, July 2012 to June 2013, will be elected at the District 17 Council Meeting being held at the The Vines Resort, Verdelho Drive, on Saturday afternoon, May 26, 2012. I have nominated for Southern Division Governor, along with John Palmer and Allan Burt.

Eligible voters – I want you to vote for me

Eligible voters are the Presidents and Vice Presidents Education or their nominated Proxies of our 62 Clubs, and the 20 current District Officers. I am asking all voters present at the Council Meeting to vote for me because

• I have vision and drive which will benefit members, clubs and areas in Southern Division along with the whole District.
• I have successful experience in the role of Club Officer, Area Governor and Division Governor
• I am committed to active service for Toastmasters clubs and members,

Vision and Drive

It has been my vision during our time in District 73 that one day we would have our own District in WA.  For that to occur we needed many more clubs and with considerable help from other enthusiastic members I have set up 20 new clubs in WA.  Now that we are in our first year as our own WA District 17 I envisage us becoming much stronger in the Perth Metro Area and in the country.  Division Governor is a key role which will give me the opportunity to help build the strength of Southern Division and District 17.

Experience

During my 17 years in Toastmasters I have held all Officer positions several times. I have been an Area Governor 3 times, each time achieving the highest award of Presidents Distinguished.  I have been the District 73 Area Governor of the Year. I have been a Division Governor 3 times, each time Presidents Distinguished.  I have been the District 73 Division Governor of the Year.

I have 6 DTM awards – Distinguished Toastmaster – the highest member awards.

 Commitment

I belong to and am an Officer in each of 9 Toastmaster Clubs in WA, 5 of which are in Southern Division. I belong to and am an officer in clubs in 4 of the 5 Areas in Southern Division

• S31: Armadale Vice President Membership and Treasurer
• S32: Victoria Quay Vice President Membership
• Netmasters Vice President Education and Vice President Public Relations
• S33: Western Founders Vice President Public Relations and Treasurer
• S35: WA Governors Vice President Public Relations

As well, I am the District Webmaster. I maintain a weekly service for Club and District Officers which summarises current Toastmaster International reports of Member Awards, Distinguished Club Awards and Division and Area Governor Awards.

I have the vision and drive, the successful experience and the commitment to fill the role of Southern Division Governor with distinction to the benefit of the members and clubs in the Division.

Peter Law

Yesterday Southern Division held its finals for the Table Topics and the Humorous Contest.

Peter won the Humorous Contest with his speech “How I saved the spirit of Christmas”.

Our members might remember that Peter didn’t win the Victoria Quay club contest – he went over time!! Fortunately he won the Armadale club contest and then the S31 Area Final. So technically he didn’t win the Division final as a Victoria Quay member. We don’t care! He is our member too, so …

Congratulations, Peter

Many members believe that every Victoria Quay meeting is special. They are right and Wednesday night was definitely one of those special meetings. There were 27 people present, with 10 visitors.  Visitor Karin joined, even though she can’t attend until June 15. We are confident that several others will join. Amongst the visitors were Toastmasters who have come to Perth for the  District Convention this weekend. We have never had an International Director visit Western Australia before, and Mike Storkey DTM came to Victoria Quay, along with his eminent Toastmaster wife Lesley.

Richard Strickland

I was Toastmaster for the night. After visitor and Western Division Governor Robin Richards had inspired us, we had a check-in with a difference. All 27 people present told us their names and how they came to join Toastmasters. It was fascinating.

Richard Strickland was Table Topics Master.  His  topics were based around Toastmasters. Two of the visitors took part as well.

Richard Anthony gave us an inspiring tonic, before Mark Richards evaluated the Table Topics.

The prepared speeches were wonderful

Gwen Williams

Barry’s “What I learned” was a powerful, emotional account of his early struggles with self esteem and his determination to use Toastmasters to be able to effectively communicate what he has learned through his life and through meditation. Alan evaluated Barry’s speech.

In her “Presents” Gwen told us of her wonderful first present from her sister and the best present she believes she has ever given. She ended with the second best present of her life, recently received from her daughter. Heljo evaluated Gwen’s speech.

Peter Law

Peter Law practiced  his humorous speech “Midlife crisis? – leave it to the professionals”. Most of us had heard it before, but it was just as funny this time. We hope Peter is rewarded by winning the  District 73 Humorous Contest on Friday night. Visitor Lesley Storkey evaluated Peters speech.

Andrew Bond gave us the Highlights with a touch of grammarian.

Glenis evaluated the evaluators.

Denis gave the  Timing Report.

Mike Storkey

The  Meeting Evaluation was delivered by Mike Storkey, our visiting International Director. Mike had some helpful suggestions for improvement and a lot of positive feedback. He was particularly impressed by the prepared speeches and the energy displayed through the whole meeting.

President Peter took over the meeting. The first item of business was to present our recently joined member Barry with his member badge.

Then he went around and asked each of our visitors how they had found the meeting. Perhaps they were being polite, but they were all very enthusiastic.

Mark reminded us about the district convention and the fact that we have three contestants in the four finals. Peter is in the humorous contest on Friday night and the table topics on Sunday morning. Neville is in the International Speech Contest on Saturday morning.

David drew attention to the programs for the next two weeks on the back of the agenda.

A group still talking at the end of supper

Story by
David Nicholas

Peter closed the meeting and we all enjoyed supper prepared by our wonderful Heljo.

Barry Windsor one of our new members gave us an inspiration on honesty and community involvement.  I am looking forward your Icebreaker speech next week.  Gwenda Williams delivered a Tonic on her first  G & T at the age of 12 with her Gran on a very special occasion I believe.

Heljo Cameron was the Table Topics Master with her topic based around exercise.  There were so many speakers tonight that poor Janet McNie had a very hard time as a first time table topics evaluator.  Well done Janet you got on with the business and trooped through it, well done.

Then we had the business end of the meeting, the prepared speeches.  Andrew Bond spoke on Social anxiety and how he got over being extremely shy as a young person and how he used  our Toastmasters Club to help him overcome some of his fear of standing up and speaking in front of people.  Positive proof that Toastmasters is good for your health.

Richard Anthony gave us a very funny speech titled Ironman, no not the super hero, not the contest and not the comic book but a story about the man who invented the Iron.  He explained that the iron was invented (tongue in cheek) to keep women occupied.  He then mentioned his inability as a bachelor to handle an Iron and gave us the lowdown on the sport of Extreme Ironing.  Excellent speech and very funny.

I then gave a speech from the Special Occasions Speech Manual – The Roast , where you poke fun at someone you know.    I roasted Neville Simmons with a speech titled Touched by a Neville.  It was good fun, well received by all  particularly Neville who was a very good sport about it.  I am looking forward to when he reciprocates.

Our meetings are good, and if you are reading this and thinking of coming to the club and checking it out, do it now, you won’t be disappointed.

Good Speeches, good people, great club.

Cheers!

Pete Law

January 26th is a public holiday for Australia Day. We are not meeting that evening.

The next meeting is on Wednesday, February 2nd.

If you have any queries about this, ring David on 0401 011 212

It was a very special meeting.  Colin gave his Advanced Leadership Workshop to complete the requirements of his ACG – the Advanced Communicator Gold.  Congratulations Colin.

Speeches

Then we had 5 speeches.  One was a joint effort by Mark and David and it was recorded.
Have a look at the podcast of New clubs in WA

We have a club which has been working on the technical side of this podcasting process.  Most of the members come from Victoria Quay.

Have a look at Netmasters.

You can add comments on the YouTube site or on this post.

David Nicholas
Webmaster
0401 011 212

The Competent Leader Manual has 10 projects.  Project 8 deals with Motivating People.  Members are required to do three of five roles, at least one of which has to be from the first two roles named.  These two roles both require the member to conduct campaigns or chair a contest.

Problem 1

Chairing a speech contest is not an eligible activity.  This is the text of the relevant role

“Membership campaign or contest chairman.  Your club conducts several membership-building campaigns or contests each year.  With the approval of your club’s vice president membership, organise and conduct a membership building contest, motivating members to participate and helping the club grow.”

This makes no reference to speech contests.  It is quite different.  Unfortunately the wording of the first role is ambiguous until the explanatory paragraph is read.  Either members and club officers don’t bother to read the explanatory material or they know of the problem and ignore it.

Problem 2

Strong, successful clubs have very great difficulty in providing opportunities for more than two or three members genuinely to complete either of the first two roles.  How many membership contests or public relations campaigns can reasonably be run in a given year?  This is particularly a problem for clubs with effective websites which attract the bulk of their new members.  I know of several such clubs in WA which have this problem.  It might sound incredible, but such clubs don’t run traditional member recruitment campaigns because they already have more than enough new members being recruited from the website.

Project 8 is a bottleneck for strong, successful clubs with many members working on the CL award and needing it to progress to the ALB award and finally to DTM.  I am sure many such members are currently guilty or victims of Problem 3 below.

Problem 3

Members and club officials in most clubs are wrongly claiming credit for successfully completing Project 8.  They are using the chairing of club, area and division speech contests as fulfilling the requirement.  It doesn’t, as is perfectly obvious from Project 6 which lists chairing a club speech contest as a separate role from the two chairing roles in Project 8.  Have a look at Project 6 and see what I mean.

What can be done about this problem?

I don’t know.  A new version of the CL Manual has recently been published.  It contains the same role requirements as the original Manual.  World Headquarters are not going to publish a revised edition for quite a while which recognises the problem I identify above, even if they agree with me.

Members and clubs which wish to promote the successful completion of the CL award will either have to turn a blind eye to the problem and use speech contests as an acceptable substitute or to find creative ways to conduct membership contests or public relations campaigns.  But read the manual.  Taking part in such campaigns or contests is not adequate – organising them and motivating other members to take part is the requirement.

What do you think about this problem?

Do you agree with my analysis?  Have you any creative suggestions for getting around the bottleneck?

Add your comment.

David Nicholas DTM
Member 318284

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