Happy New Year!

I wish all of you and your families have a wonderful 2012! (I can’t believe we are in the second half of the year already. Can you?)

 

Officer Training

We had one officer training session in Dec. (Thanks to Area 83 Governor Jean who organized that event.) Seventeen Area 84 officers were trained. Yeah! Fourteen or fifteen to go!

 

The second training session is scheduled on Jan. 14, at Rochester Methodist Hospital Dining Room 6 from 10 am to 11:30 am. Thanks to Vicki, Area 85 Governor, for arranging this. Those who didn’t attend the Dec. training session, I hope you will attend this one. I hope. I hope…

 

Area Governor’s Second Visit

I will start my second club visit soon. Official visit, that is. I will contact VP-Education in each club to arrange that. Not sure what would be a good topic to talk about. At this moment, I think I will share my 6-month Area Governor experience with you. If you have any suggestion, please feel free to contact me.

 

Area Contest

Area 84 Spring Contest is on Mar. 16, 7 pm, at Calvary Episcopal Church. This time we have International speech contest and Table Topic speech contest. I hope many of you would participate. (Do you know that all Area Governors are not allowed to compete? And several of us really enjoy the competition!)

 

Area 84 Challenge – 2012

I don’t know about you… I had a lot of fun with our area challenge. Are you ready for another one? Ready or not, here we go… in less than 400 words, tell us what you like about your club. I will post it on the challenge page and we (secret judges) will select 3 winners from all entries.

 

This is not a writing contest! It is not an advertisement! Everyone has a chance to win!

 

See you pretty soon.

The Winners are…

Our area 84 challenge is officially ended. The first prize winner is Bright Monday (earned 51.5 points. Wow!) Mayo Day Breakers second (earned 23 points. Great!) and Hi-Nooners third (earned 10 points. Excellent!)  Each will be rewarded a wireless presenter. Congratulation!

 

Many of you have told me how much you have enjoyed visiting other clubs. Many say you have learned something from this experience. All of you are winners.

 

I want to thank those who participated. You rock.

Extra! Extra! Bright Monday captures EGG October 8, 2011

On Oct. 8, five Bright Monday members (plus one member belongs to both clubs, which gave us another .5 point) drove toSt. Paulto visit Saturday Morning Live Toastmasters Club to capture the EGG. Other than Bright Monday, there were 3 other clubs there for the same purpose. Since Bright Monday had more members present, we won!

 

We are very proud of Bright Monday. The EGG is inRochesternow!!! Let’s try to keep it inRochesterorSpring Valley!!!  (I am sure Bright Monday is ready to welcome guests!)

 

If you haven’t heard about EGG, here is the link…  http://www.d6tm.org/EGG

Area 84 ROCKS!

I read our District’s online report. I couldn’t believe what I saw. All area 84 clubs had paid October dues on time (before Oct. 1)!!! ALL clubs! Every single one! You guys are awesome!

 Other than that, there are already several DCP points claimed by several clubs! Great job!

 I am so excited, and so proud.

Receiving Feedback

I asked people to give me feedback on our recent area contest and learned several things that I could improve on our next one.

 

I agreed with what people said and felt bad. Suddenly the whole contest event seemed like a failure to me even though many people told me the event was great.  

 

It was at that *down* moment, I received an article from Leadership Freak. It had this question on it: What do you do when you remember all the things you’ve done wrong and forget the good?

 

And it continued, “Beating ourselves up wastes brain power, drains passion, and slows growth.”

 

Amazing! When I needed an advice the most, it came to me! Sometime, all we need is one good advice to carry us forward.

 

I appreciate all of feedback I have received. They allow me do better next time!  

 

Area Contest Expense Report

Recently someone told me that someone had told him that Bright Monday Club was the one who asked for $5 contest event fee when we hosted our area contest last time. It is totally not true. The hosting club sets up the registration table, collects the money and then gives all the money to the Area Governor. Bright Monday didn’t receive a penny.

To be fair, our Area Governor did take care of bit items like room, trophies, printing…

It’s one of my goals to minimize the money the hosting club had to spend. By asking each club to contribute a food item, I was *almost* able to do that. There were still plates, forks, spoons, napkins… etc. Sadrul, our contest chair, ended up purchasing all of that and he told me I didn’t have to reimburse him. Thanks, Sadrul.

Food – how important is the food? I personally don’t think the food is that important. Having some dessert and coffee would be good enough. If an Area Governor wants to have a big party, he or she (instead of the hosting club) should prepare to absorb the cost, my opinion. (I enjoy feeding people. I think I got that from my mom.)

I want to post the expense report here so everyone knows where the money went and why it is important to come and support the event.  Without your support, we may as well forget about the contest.

Expenses:

$70.70  Trophies purchased by Helen

$50        Room paid by Helen

$20.24   Certificate paid by Helen (will print them myself next time to save money)

$11.27   15 folders paid by Helen (will reuse for spring contest)

$7.37     name tags, envelopes, pens paid by Helen (have enough left for spring contest)

—————————————————————–

$159.58

Expense that no need for reimbursement:

$__   table clothes, plastic bowl for chips, drinks, napkins, utensils, cups, coffee, plates, print programs… etc. from Sadrul (Thanks.)

$__   drinks and chips from Deana (Thanks)

$__   5 foot-long Subway Sandwiches purchased by Helen

$__   bread, cucumbers, cream cheese to make cucumber sandwiches – Helen

$__   gifts – Helen

Collected

$175 – 35 members paid the event

$40 – reimbursed by district

———————————————-

$215

$215 – $159.58 = $55.42  — Excellent!

$55.42 is saved for the spring contest. After the spring contest, I am hoping we will have some money left to buy some speech manuals for each club. For example, we can buy some CC manuals so each club can lend the manual to its new member until the new member receives his own CC manual. This is just one thought.

What I Have Learned About Area Contest

Last year when I was the President of Bright Monday club, our club was asked to host the fall area contest. I was also asked to be the contest chair. I quickly decided that I needed a co-chair and was so happy when Suzann Nelson agreed to be one.

 

You have to understand that Ken Scribner, was a new Area Governor. None of us – Ken, Suzanne and I, had had any experience on hosting/chairing an area contest. I had to start from scratch, reading every article I could find online about hosting and chairing an area contest. In the mean time, Ken did the same thing, trying to learn what were involved in having a contest. As a new Area Governor, Ken wanted the event to be perfect. We did, too. The whole task was overwhelming for us. At one point toward the end, I almost had a nervous breakdown. I was easily irritated and constantly feeling behind even though we had most of things under control. Thanks to Suzanne and many Bright Monday members who provided me the support I needed to survive.

 

I learned a lot about hosting/chairing an area contest, but I had no idea about the money we had collected. We were told to give the money to our Area Governor, and we were told that we wouldn’t be reimbursed for anything. We were also told to provide enough food so everyone would feel that he had gotten his money worth. Since Bright Monday is a new club, didn’t have a lot of money in the bank… I’ll let you figure out the rest. 

 

This year, I determined not to put too much burden on the hosting club and the contest chair. First, I announced the pot luck idea – every club would contribute one food item, hosting club would provide one food item, drinks, napkins and utensils. (The pot luck idea was come up about 2 weeks late – I apologize. It takes me time to be creative   And I would provide sandwiches. I also wanted to use my experience in hosting/chairing an area contest to help our contest chair as much as I could.

 

Suddenly, I had this big appreciation for Ken for giving me the opportunity to host/chair last year!

 

So, here is what I learned:

1. The task you are assigned, no matter how stressful or tedious, will benefit you in the future one way or the other.
2. There is a fine line between trying to help and taking away the opportunity for people to learn. At first, I tried to suggest Sadrul how things could be done. Soon, I realized that I had to let him make his own decision so he could get more out of this experience. I changed my attitude from suggesting him to simply sharing what we had done.
3. Delegating is not easy for some people, including me. But in order to build a strong team, every member has to be given an opportunity to contribute.
4. There are things can be done earlier – buy napkins, create signs… Get them done so you can focus on the more important things like creating flier, program… when contest is near.
5. Watch the money you spend. Know how much you are willing to pay out of your own pocket ahead of time (or you don’t want to pay any). I don’t have any surprises.
6. At most of the area contest, the toastmaster would ask chief judge to state the contest rule twice: one for each contest (once for Tall Tales contest and once for Humorous contest, for example.) George, our Toastmaster, only asked once. I thought that was a great idea – they were the same words anyway.
7. I thought I would stand at the entrance to greet everyone (I was looking forward to doing that), since I wasn’t assigned to any task. I was wrong. I was often (constantly) called upon to handle a situation and didn’t have any time to greet anyone.

 

Even with my best effort, Sadrul, our contest chair, still ended having a lot of work to do. I deeply appreciate it.

 

Things that can be improved:

1. Assign two backup helpers who will perform any role if the assigned person doesn’t show up. Our original chief timer was sick and our backup timer was needed for another task, suddenly we were short of two timers and I had to find two timers at the last minute (and later quickly make certificate for them and wasn’t 100% sure how to spell their name…) Had I had two backup helpers appointed, I could easily assign the work to them and I could prepare the certificate before the meeting just in case.
2. Our chief judge didn’t know that we had two ballots counter selected. She didn’t want to bother me (I think) so she found two people herself. Suddenly we had 4 ballots counters instead of two. Again, I didn’t have extra certifications (I used the last two for Timers). Make sure to let Chief Judge know who are the ballots counters, and judges.

 

I had a wonderful time. It does require a lot of work, but toward the end I had a great satisfaction for what we had done. Believe it or not, I can’t wait for our next contest!