TLI took place on Saturday, June 24, 2017 in Cedar Knolls, NJ. Our District Trio comprised of District Director Janice Buffalow, DTM; Program Quality Director Manny Reyes, ACG, ALB; and Club Growth Director Lynda Starr, DTM, welcomed us. Our leaders provided a series of presentations with general information of interest to Club Officers in the morning prior to the breakout sessions for each of the seven club officer positions.
Janice discussed the importance of Club Success Plans and the Moments of Truth educational module.
Manny informed us that the contests at the District
conference are Tall Tales and Table Topics this fall. He encouraged participation in the contests.
“We need to communicate better and start now. It’s about you being better than you were before,” he remarked. “If you want something you have to work for it.”
Perpetual Progress is the theme for the conference, which will take place November 18 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Somerset, NJ, the location of the District’s previous two conferences.
Manny introduced Emilia Volyand, DTM, who will serve as District Chief Judge for 2017-2018. Emilia stated, “It starts with serving as an evaluator at the club level. If you pick the right judges, they will pick the right winners.” She will train people to be judges in August. “It is challenging to judge without judges’ training,” she concluded.
Here are some of the highlights of the Effective Evaluations presentation by Rachel Weiss, DTM. “There is always something we can learn and to offer the speaker in an evaluation. How do we build self esteem when an evaluator?” She continued with other techniques and messages including, “Your evaluation is a gift to the speaker that you were listening. I look forward to hearing your next speech.”
“Sometimes you know their history and can comment on how they improved and that different tics may evolve over time for speakers.” She concluded with, “Never stop improving.”
District Webmaster Tom Somers provided examples of Club websites; the District website, tm83.org; and the Toastmasters international website, toastmasters.org.
He stated, “Check out your home page. Make sure the club is alive, not dead. Take a picture of award winners and keep your contact info current.”
He continued by advising us to check out our own websites once in awhile to see it from a potential guest’s perspective. He displayed websites from Old Bridge Toastmasters and Jim Friend as examples.
After making updates to websites, “Remember to hit save,” he informed
us so our changes and hard work are not lost. He showed us Vice President of Education resources, including agendas, and stated that you can send agendas with response links and see attendance responses. “Reach out to people not attending in awhile and put pressure on members to sign up (for roles) in advance.”
For our District website, tm83.org, Tom showed us features relevant to club officers including the section for contest aids and the Help Wanted Section.
“The site works best when viewed using Chrome, Firefox and Edge, but not Internet Explorer, though. Click and hold for a few seconds to see items lacking contrast. I am working on it for mobile,” he advised.
He announced the beginning of the TM83 Blog and went on to discuss features of the Toastmasters International site, toastmasters.org and how it can help club officers do their jobs.
Leadership Central is a great resource and he encouraged all officers to log in to the site. He informed us that new updates were made to the site recently including making options bigger and clearer.
while the TLI is the highlight of the training season, there are still many great sessions available and ability to earn DCP points and TI bucks.