District 37 Conference Recap

Part of me can't believe I'm actually going to attempt this, but yes, I'm going to try to summarize an entire 2-day District Conference in one single blog posting.  Here goes nothin'...!

One of the privileges of being the girlfriend of the 2003 World Champion of Public Speaking - aside from primo seating at the speech contest each year - is the opportunity to travel with him to a whole host of events.  The most recent of those was the District 37 Fall Conference in Hickory, North Carolina, where he'd been invited as their special guest and keynote speaker.

When Jim introduced me to District Governor Pam Christopher at the International Convention in August, I mentioned to her that I'd be joining him, and I'd love to serve them by delivering an educational session if they had need for another presenter.  And so it was that I found myself not just along for the ride, but also on the schedule to speak on Saturday morning.

But first, Jim and I got to relax and enjoy their Friday night events.  They centered around the Evaluation Contest and a roast for their outgoing District Governor.

(Aren't we cute?)

As we found our seats that night, and perused the program, Jim let out a gasp - No way! - when he saw a familiar name on the list of contestants.  It turned out that a Brian Woolf was in the Evaluation Contest.  Does that name sound familar?  It sure did to me ... because Brian Woolf competed with Jim in Atlanta at the 2003 World Championship of Public Speaking.

We quickly spotted him across the ballroom, and made our way over to say hello.  After a hearty handshake with Jim, Brian turned to me and caught me completely by surprise when he greeted me with a big, warm hug and a kiss on the cheek.

It turns out that Brian is a fairly regular visitor to "The World According to Angie", and had been keeping up on our goings-on through the posts here on my blog.  The conversation that followed was a bit surreal, as he introduced me to his wife, and we chatted for a bit - he remarked on a few things where I'd think, "How'd he know about that?" and then I'd realize - oh, wait, he read about it here on my blog...  Like when he poked at Jim about how early we'd have to leave on Sunday morning.  It was almost like we had a series of in-jokes going on ... and how strange is that?  I'd only actually met Brian one other time, at a previous Convention, and it was just for a few minutes.  But through the wonder of technology - and my inane ramblings here on the web - we had this instant connection I didn't realize we had.  And that's pretty darn cool!

The evaluation contest was really enjoyable - seven contestants, all evaluating target speaker Kevin Spaulding, who delivered an advocacy speech on donating blood.  By the end of his seven minutes, I was ready to get in line at the nearest blood bank ... he spoke with such passion and conviction!  I paid extra-close attention to the evaluation contestants, since I was delivering an ed session the next morning on evaluations ... so I took lots of notes.

Brian took second place, and a woman named Becky Sansbury took first with the single most eloquent evaluation I have ever heard in all my years in Toastmasters.  Becky has a true gift for delivering feedback that is specific, instructional, and motivational.  I was floored by her evaluation, and there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that she had won.

They closed out their Friday night events with a roast of their Immediate Past District Governor.  These folks know how to do a roast!  Their roast-master was hilarious, ragging on not only the IPDG, but on each person that got up and spoke.  But as he said, a roast is the ultimate compliment.  It says, "We're good enough friends and we respect each other enough that we can poke a bit of fun and we know it's all done with love."  How beautifully put!  We laughed until we cried, and it was a fun ending to the night.

Oh, but wait ... I forgot to tell you ... as we arrived at our seats that night, we found a pair of bright green bottles sitting right next to Jim's name tent:

That's right: two 20-oz bottles of Mountain Dew.  You see, it became an ongoing, running gag for the entire weekend.  The members of District 37 had read Jim's blog, and took note his love for The Dew.  And when he spoke at Bank of America for them on Thursday, they had a large supply of the stuff.  During his speech, he recounted the story of the Father's Day lunch at Outback Steakhouse and his encounter with excellent customer service ... involving two cans of Mountain Dew.  (I thought he had blogged about it, but I just searched for it, and can't find it ... so I guess this is a story he reserves for his keynotes.  If you've heard him speak about it, you know what I'm talking about.  And if you don't, well, email Jim and invite him to come speak for your group and you'll find out what it's all about!)  So the "mysteriously appearing bottles of Dew" became sort of an ongoing thing.  Friday night, these two bottles were waiting for him ... some little "elf" brought them in and left them at Jim's seat.  You should have seen how excited Jim was when we walked in and he found them there!  No iced tea or water for him ... he was drinkin' the "GOOD STUFF"!

On to Saturday: it dawned pretty early, and I headed down to run set-up for my educational session.  Yes, I finally managed to get my act together and polish up the Evaluation material ... I was ready.  Jim was a saint, taking care of printing and copying my evaluation forms for me while I did the room set-up.  Oh, and by the way - a word of advice to everyone out there who does this type of speaking work: if your presentation requires sound, and you think you're being all kinds of clever by bringing an external speaker with you ... and you use said speaker in Charlotte, and forget to put the power adaptor back inside your suitcase, make sure you've checked the speaker thoroughly and know if it has battery back-up.

Thank God for Jim.  Once he calmed me down from my total freak-out, when I realized I had left the power adaptor at the Charlotte district office, he examined my external speaker and announced that it could run on a set of 4 AA batteries.  So after we confirmed my room was ready to go, we climbed into the rental and drove off ... finding ourselves at Home Depot.  I'm not kidding.  It was just a few miles down the road, and across the street from a McDonalds, which was going to work just fine for us for breakfast, thankyouverymuch.  We made quite the picture, walking into Home Depot in business suits to buy a pack of AA batteries.  Hee hee hee...!

My educational session went well.  There are some things I think I'll tweak the next time I do this one, but all in all, I think it worked.  I did about 25 minutes of "teach" where I talked about the things that bad, good, and great evaluators do, focused on the idea of clarity (in organization), specificity (in reinforcement and correction), and motivation (in word choice).  Then, I played a speech from the 2007 WCPS for them to watch and take notes on ... and then we took a volunteer to deliver an evaluation of the speech.  He slipped out the back of the room, had 5 minutes to compile his notes, and came back in.

The speech I showed them was Robert Killen's "Grandma at the Door".  I'm thoroughly in love with his writing, as I noted in my recap of the speech contest, and I thought they'd all enjoy seeing it.  The evaluator did an OUTSTANDING job!  I was accused - lovingly, of course - of having him as a "plant".  They felt he couldn't possibly have done that good of a job with his evaluation if he hadn't already seen the speech ... which he hadn't ... or if I hadn't pre-coached him ... which I hadn't.  Seriously - this guy was just paying really good attention during the class, and exceptional attention during the speech, and crafted a top-notch evaluation.  I was so proud of him!

Next up was their luncheon.  I was delighted to sit next to Becky Sansbury - the evaluation contest winner from the night before - as well as her husband.  They're a delightful couple, and It turns out we have a whole lot in common.  I only wish we'd had more time to visit!  Becky has gone into business for herself, forming a company called Real Life Communication.  She's passionate about crisis communication and helping businesses learn how to assist employees through personal crisis and managing the impact of that on the workplace as a whole.  I found it to be fascinating - not only the topic, but Becky's obvious passion for her work as well - and I wish her huge amounts of success!

Jim's keynote came directly after lunch.  He delivered "Hitting the Mark: The Quest for Excellence" in which he talks about his road to the World Championship, three years long, and what he learned along the way.  I've heard him deliver this address before, and each time I hear it, I am impressed by just how vulnerable Jim makes himself and how much of himself he shares with the audience.  He's so stinkin' honest about how he was "coming from the wrong place" and how he was arrogant (hey, his word) ... so that by the time he has the right motivation, and the right reasons, and he's on that stage for the third time, and they call his name as the winner ... everyone in that room understands the journey Jim was on - heck, they've gone on that journey right along with him during his keynote - and they WANT his name to be the one Ted Corcoran calls out as the winner.  And at the end, when Jim asks, "Are you satisfied?" you can't help but want to rip your shirt off, whirl it around your head, and holler like an idiot, "NOOOOOO!"

Okay, so you've got to hear the keynote to understand that last bit.  But I can tell you that Jim moved an entire ballroom of Toastmasters on Saturday afternoon, and made everyone think really hard about their own personal targets of excellence.  I heard a lot of discussion about that very topic throughout the rest of the conference.

It didn't feel like we got much of a break - even during their business meeting, Jim and I were shaking hands and talking and visiting, pretty much non-stop - but Jim stayed well-stocked with his "icy cold beverage of choice".  As you can see here, two of the members of District 37 brought over two more of the 20-oz bottles of "the good stuff" to keep him stocked on Saturday afternoon.  Jim was, needless to say, delighted!  After an afternoon of visiting with our new friends, we finally slipped away around quarter to five to get ready for dinner.

SPECIAL NOTE FOR AUDREY: I thought of you on Saturday night as I started to get ready for the formal event.  Actually, I think of you every time I'm at one of these things and I pull out the bobby pins and the extra-strength hairspray and the curling iron ... and I say a little prayer that maybe, this time, my hair will actually cooperate.  After all those years of us doing District service together, traveling together, sharing hotel rooms, you know all about the frantic fight to get my hair to cooperate.  And the colorful language and temper tantrums that usually accompany it.  But I'll have you know that a miracle occurred on Saturday night, and I managed a 3-minute up-do that actually did what it was supposed to, the first time I asked it to ... and it didn't look half-bad:

Granted, it won't win any high-fashion awards, but considering it didn't involve either 2nd degree burns from the curling iron or profanity bad enough to make even a sailor blush, I'll take it!

So, as you can tell, Saturday night was the formal event.  I love getting dressed up ... actually, correction: I love getting dressed up with Jim.  He's such a good sport about matching his tie to my dress, or pulling out his tux if I ask him to (I didn't this time) and he's always willing to pose for photos.  I'm such the lucky woman, for so many reasons ... this being just one of many.

Saturday night was their Humorous Speech Contest.  Seven contestants, all of whom were really funny ... it made for a very enjoyable evening!  There were awards from the IPDG to his team, new DTMs who were given their medals, and then, to close out the evening, they had Jim do a closing keynote.

Well, it wasn't actually a keynote.  It was more of a 30-minute stand-up comedy routine.  And let me tell you ... he rocked the house.  Jim gleefully poked fun at everyone, from the District Governor to the hosts who had driven him around - for the fact that all three of them had gotten lost and shown him much more of North Carolina than any of them originally intended - he commented on the unending stream of Mountain Dew, and let me tell you, by this time, he was so over-caffeinated ... I think part of that played into his performance on Saturday night, and it worked really well...

Yes, that's FOUR more bottles of Dew sitting at his seat on Saturday night.  They took such immensely good care of him - and me - and Jim had them all in stitches with his closing comedy routine.

It was an incredibly fun way to close out the conference, and it definitely ended the evening on a high note.

It probably took another 45 minutes or so to finish saying goodbye and goodnight to everyone ... OH - lest I forget, here's a photo of Jim and I with Brian:

And now, those of you who have seen the video of the 2003 contest in Atlanta are going, "OH - that's Brian Woolf!"  The guy from New Zealand with the wonderful accent... yup, that's Brian.

I TOTALLY forgot to mention - I had a chance to meet their new International Director, Lee Holliday, and his wife Catherine.  I didn't meet Lee at the International Convention, because he wasn't campaigning at the time.  His story is an interesting one; he wasn't elected.  You see, Will Snader was elected to the post, but passed away quite suddenly, shortly after the elections.  It was a devastating loss to the Region, as my understanding is that Will had a long history of dedicated servant leadership.  Lee had already announced his intent to run for ID for the following year, and WHQ appointed him to the post.  So, Lee is now the ID for their Region - and from what I could tell at the conference, he's doing an outstanding job.  Lee has a passion for his work, and his primary message for the weekend was, "It's not about you."  In his address to the district, he emphasized the importance of leaders in the club and in the district understanding that their service isn't about them ... it's about the members that have entrusted them with the office.  Seeing as how that was my philosophy as District Governor, Lee is a man after my own heart, and an instant friend!

It was a fun, exhausting weekend in North Carolina.  Not only did we make lots of new friends, but we had a chance to catch up with some old ones.  We were still riding on the euphoric wave of Saturday night when we loaded our bags into the car at 4:30a Eastern time and headed to the airport.

I had a realization on Saturday that I shared with Jim: this conference was different than ones I've accompanied him to previously, and I think the key is that I was a presenter.  At other events, I've been there as "Jim's girlfriend".  Not that there's anything wrong with that - oh, believe me, that's a title I cherish with all of my heart! - but I think I was treated differently this time because not only was I Jim's girlfriend, but I also presented an educational session.  I wasn't just the eye candy on Jim's arm, but I had a chance to prove myself as a Toastmaster in my own right, as a halfway-decent speaker and facilitator, with knowledge to share and passion for the organization.  And I think that made a difference as people were interacting with me.  I wasn't just Jim's companion ... it made us almost more of a matched set.  Am I completely rambling here, or is that making any sense to anyone but me?

I heard comments from a couple different people as they observed Jim and I working together... when he came in and helped me set up for my ed session, and then introduced me - they were impressed.  I told them that we take turns supporting each other.  Then, when it was time for his keynote, and I was setting out handouts and making sure he had water on-stage and everything else he needed ... someone said to me, "Wow! You really do take turns taking care of each other!"  Yeah, we really do.  Isn't it cool?

I had such immense fun in North Carolina with the members of District 37 this weekend.  To Pam Christopher, their District Governor, and all the members of their team - thank you for having us, and for being such phenomenal hosts!  If your fall conference was any indication, your District is in great hands, and you're off to a fantastic start for the year.

Comments

[Audrey Reed]

WOW, what an incredible weekend! No doubt you were exhausted when you got home yesterday.
But, no doubt ... the highlight has to be the up do! Dahling, you looked faaaabulous! ;-)