BIG "D" TALK ~ TOASTMASTERS

A View from Inside the TLI Kick-off ...

This entry was posted on 7/12/2010 5:11 PM and is filed under TLI, District.

How many attended July 10’s TLI Kick-off, you ask?  Well, the large cafeteria for the general session ran out of seats about 15 minutes before it began. There were people standing up all around the room, especially in the far corner, along the center of the back wall, and near the entrance.  I already knew that quite a few new members and non-officers attended—including the vice-president for education of a club that chartered on June 28—but I had no idea how many. So, I asked Summer 2010 TLI Chair Tracie Henderson (and 2009-2010 Southern Division governor) if she knew.  She replied,

“This weekend was in fact a huge success. We had 358 club officer positions trained! Officers from 113 [out of 146] clubs participated!  48 clubs had 4 or more officers trained!  WOW!  There were over 400 attendees and we do have an exact number that I can’t seem to find right now.  Oh, we also had two clubs from District 25 that had all of their officers trained.  So, overall it was a great day for everyone involved.”

Wow, indeed!

I got to see several officers from the Hillcrest, Eagles, and ProSpeak clubs that were in my Area 33 last year.  One thing’s for sure, once you’ve been an area governor, it forever changes your perspective as a Toastmaster.  The classes were full for the first three hours. The first hour, I went to Helen Liu’s class on what is required to a become Distinguished Toastmaster; having earned two DTMs and being a recent past district governor, she definitely knows how to accomplish that.  I took extensive notes on the requirements for the High Performance Leadership (HPL) project; that’s perhaps the most difficult requirement for the Advanced Leader Silver (ALS).  At the time, she was close to deciding on her third HPL project!

Next, I returned to the cafeteria where Gary Gillespie—Spring 2009 District 50 Table Topics Contest Winner and Fall 2009 recipient of the Heart of District 50 Award—explained in his inimitable way how to succeed in table topics, both in a club and in contests.

It was still packed with long, patient lines for lunch, but some of us had to wait for more of what we paid for to arrive!

The third hour I spent in Lisa Hill’s session about the educational series—The Better Speaker Series, The Successful Club Series, and The Leadership Excellence Series while also mentioning the Success/Leadership and Success/Communication Series.  There was a fascinating mix of people in the room that included those of us who have presented at least one educational module and at least five new Toastmasters who said they were “just soaking it all in.”

Then I returned to the cafeteria where Spring 2009 District 50 Humorous Speech Contest Winner Cynthia Brown described the unexpected journey she went on and told us how to apply that to our own winning humorous speeches, including the lessons learned during the process and even from the winning speech itself.

All in all, the TLI’s Kick-off was an amazing, educational, and uplifting event that I am very glad I was able to attend. Congratulations to Tracie, Danni, and everyone who helped Dare us to Succeed!

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