2009 04 clarion

Volume 10

April/May

Leaving tracks or not?

Fellow Toastmasters, you will find various answers to this topic in this edition of the Clarion.

After a very long winter, everybody appreciates having the opportunity to get out into the sunshine again. Some especially good reasons for Toastmasters to get out and about were the Spring speech and evaluation contests at the Club, Area and Division levels. In a few days, this contest cycle will culminate at the District 59 Spring Conference in DĂźsseldorf. Have you planned to attend? You will find some good reasons to come. This conference surely will leave happy tracks in your memory from enjoying the wonderful organization, fantastic speech contests and educationals in a superb location. Even if you do not attend you can win one of ten Toastmasters advanced handbooks.

Travelling, accommodation and catering are the principal expense items for every conference organizer; for every participant’s purse, as well. We offer some tips for saving you money and for protecting the environment, as well. At three (international) Division contests a checkup list was useful to invest money in creating valuable social and individual learning tracks.

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2009

Every Spring we hold the annual contests for Club Newsletter and Club Website.

They pave tracks to new members and keep us in touch with our current members. So far, there is only one submission, and we have extended the deadline for submissions to the 15th of June. Read the article for further details.

Websites are one of our major marketing instruments for attracting new members. Quite often problems occur when a former member of Toastmasters is still the owner of a website and does not want to hand it over to somebody active in the club. To prevent unnecessary tracks of emails or consultations with your lawyer, here are some ideas about how to handle the situation before it becomes a problem.

Moving about during a speech is one good way to create memorable tracks within the consciousness of your audience. Gernot Glawe describes a Wangerooge island workshop last summer where the question posed was “How to use space?”

Bill Monsour reports on the ongoing work of the Easy Speak support team. If you have not noticed yet, this valuable tool for planning club meetings is improved and enhanced regularly. It is supported by a very active team from across Europe.

Lastly, Ellen Hermens delivers some good reasons for celebrating. If you have been, for example, on track to become a Competent Communicator and you have reached your goal, it is time to celebrate! Forget not, as VP Education, you also need to keep Toastmasters International on track about the latest achievements in your clubs. By receiving feedback on the club’s tracks using the Distinguished Club Program, members and clubs can choose to follow the same tracks or to change to new ones.

Have fun reading and in developing valuable tracks!

Ingo Cremer

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The Toast & Dance Spring Conference in Düsseldorf Every November and May, Toastmaster District conferences give us the chance to meet together with Toastmasters from all over Europe. This conference, however, will be extra special; everything is being professionally prepared, thanks to Dirk Löffelbein and his team. The conference hotel is also special. The Intercontinental is one of Germany’s best business hotels and it is located right on Düsseldorf´s most prestigious boulevard, the Königsallee. Arrive by train in Düsseldorf, and enjoy a walk through the pedestrian zone to the hotel.

The educationals provide great value for your life in and out of Toastmasters. Here is a peek at this year’s programme: Get insight into how to make the next 12 months the best year of your life by examining the Benjamin Button Syndrome as presented by Carol Bausor. Understand your personal mindset through the experiences of Niko Viramo. He will share what he has learned about success in Timbuktu, Kazakhstan and California, so you don´t have to go there yourself.

When using Mind Maps to make up your mind, you will be astonished how clear your picture will become even with very complex matters. Horst Müller is a certified trainer for Mind Maps and will show examples from everyday life, including the requirements for the Competent Leader and Communicator programs.

You can also learn how to become charismatic by using the right breathing with your audience.

Naomi Watts will help you to reduce technique-learning and let your thoughts flow as free as your breath and voice.

Educationals are always valuable for your Toastmasters life. Franz Lauterbach, will show us how to give better evaluations.

Agnes Tarnai is by jesters and clowns. workshop you will what gave them a status and what Toastmasters can learn from them.

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Not all presentations are in English. For the French audience, there is a presentation by Jean-Paul Pham about cultivating yourself from within.

When you go to Düsseldorf, you will find lots of inexpensive travel arrangements for transportation and hotels.

Check with Deutsche Bahn and Ameropa. They offer cheap rates for train usage when booking a hotel at various levels of comfort. Go to www.district59.org for a link to the conference webpage and lots more useful information.

Around this conference there is a special contest for every Toastmaster in the District. Prizes are ten Advanced Toastmasters manuals. If you are not going to Düsseldorf, just imagine you go on a virtual travel.

What do you have to do to win a handbook? Simply fill out the tally sheet (page 7) in the article: Conference with reduced tracks in your purse. Check out the kilometers for your real or virtual travel to Düsseldorf. Then estimate the amount of CO2 your transportation causes as well as accommodation and catering. Send your data by mail to IPP@hannover-speakers.de by June 15th.

Those closest to the real figures of their environmental footprint around this (virtual) journey will win one out of ten Advanced Toastmasters Manuals of their choice.

And, don’t forget to bring your dancing shoes with you!

Conferences with reduced tracks in your purse – and for the environment Every six months, Toastmasters come together for contests on the Club, Area, Division and District level. Besides intensive travelling, a lot of money is spent for catering and, staying over night, for accommodations. Here is a list of 8 check points for organizing a conference and leaving fewer tracks in your purse.

1. Find a location that is not to expensive and can easily be reached with public transportation.

When choosing a location, you are also deciding most of the costs that follow. At three Division conferences in Hannover, we chose a very affordable location. One was the Literature hall in the House for the Arts. Another was the public hall of an international school. Both places were Clarion

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within walking distance of the main station. By traveling together by train, participants save money. Large hotels mostly offer rather expensive packages – if you look around you will often find representative places with a high ratio of price/value. For example, you could go to the assembly rooms in a Town hall, or other facilities with large restaurants close to hotels, or even youth hostels (that are often as good as hotels nowadays.)

2. Organize the catering with local food and drinks.

If you buy, for example, mineral water locally, besides saving money, you also save kilometers in transportation of goods. You can do the same with food: you will surely find some caterers that provide you with food from the local region. Or, you organize the catering with your club members. If everybody prepares just one dish, you quickly have a large buffet that everybody will enjoy. At one conference, we ordered a meatless buffet (meat was available to anyone, however, for an extra fee to them) and we could thereby enjoy a very large variety of dishes.

3. Look for quality instead of quantity.

At the last Division conference in November 2008 in Hanover, we decided to order food from an organic restaurant. Although we did not have a huge amount of food to offer, everybody was very satisfied; the soup was extremely delicious. Another delight was the specially baked bread with self-made spread. For a nicer feeling while eating and drinking, we had rented plates and cups made of china. The rental company we chose was a social supportive company for the physically and mentally disabled.

4. Use environmentally friendly material to distribute to participants.

It is common to hand out the program, additional material on educationals as well as blank papers to the participants. You can reduce that impact on the costs and on the environment if you use recyclable material.

Use paper folders from recycled material instead of plastic ones.

They are sometimes offered with an environmental label such as the Blue Angel in Germany.

This material is of such good quality that you can reuse them several times (most participants gave them back without asking them to so). Keep in mind that every sheet of paper has a virtual rucksack of 80 liters of water. Just by handing out less paper and Clarion

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using recycled paper, you reduce the tracks of environmental impact. Most people have their own pen with them. As backup you may provide pencils (even coloured ones). Not everyone needs a plastic ballpen that is thrown away anyway.

5. Consider public transportation when chosing beginning and ending times.

If you check the possibilities for your participants and contestants to use public transportation, you make it easier for them to travel to the conference in a relaxed way. You may also offer to help the participants to find travel mates by sending lists of people that live in the same or neighbored cities. Sometimes people think it is absolutely necessary to fly. Besides the fact, that distances below 600 km are usually faster to reach by train, travelling on the ground is also astonishing cheap. For example, a sleeping train with every comfort and breakfast, is around 90 Euros from Germany to Sweden, including the joy of a little sea journey.

6. Do the best to omit, reduce or mitigate the rest – and if you have resources: compensate for what you have created.

Some organizations offer you information about the energy and material that is produced through your actions. Some progressive hotels can even tell you what effect an overnight stay has on the environment. For larger conferences, the Deutsche Bahn offers the possibility of special conference travel rates.

Accompanying this offer, they can figure out the complete carbon dioxide emissions caused by the travelling. These emissions are then reduced by using electricity from renewable sources for the kilometers travelled by train.

You can also take care of compensation yourself in various ways such as with www.atmosfair.de (for flights), www.myclimate.org (in general) or with many other organizations. They provide you with lots of ideas and information on how to save energy and material.

At our Division conferences where we had approximately 40 participants, there were emissions of 1,5 tons of CO2, not including overnight stays. There is another very simple solution for participants traveling too far – start new clubs.

7. Calculate your impact on the environment.

It is simple to tally how many participants are at the conference. Where do they come from and how did they travel? How much and what type of material did you hand out?

Here is a short list with some simple items for counting the participants travelling.

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Tally sheet for transportation usage, accommodation and catering: Train: Place of Departure

Using mostly high speed trains

Place to go to: Car:

Type:

Small car (5 l/100km)

Using mostly high speed trains Gasoline

Diesel

Middle sized (8l/100km)

Luxury (12l/100km)

Estimated kilometers round trip:

______ kilometers

When travelling together, number of persons:

______ persons incl. driver

Plane: Flight to conference:

from _________________to ___________________

Flight from conference: from_________________ to ___________________ Acknowledgements:_____________________________________________ Accommodation:________________________________________ CO2____ Catering:______________________________________________ CO2____ Additional Information :___________________________________________

8. Give feedback and learn for the next time.

There is always room for improvement. Even if you do your best, you might have overseen a wonderful location or you haven´t asked one caterer with excellent offerings. Collect what you have and have a feedback round with your organization team. Do not forget the feedback of the participants and their valuable ideas and comments.

If you have any questions regarding these topics you are welcomed to contact me at IPP@hannover-speakers.de or Ingo@biographieberatung.info .

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Contests for Club Websites and Club Newsletters Every spring we acknowledge the best websites and newsletters within District 59. Not all clubs have a newsletter yet, however most clubs maintain a website.

So far, only one club has submitted an entry. To give as many of the clubs as possible the opportunity to participate in this competition, the deadline is extended to the 15th of June. Till then you can overhaul your website or maybe create a newsletter. In any case: use the chance of getting recognition and learning from each other.

Once again, we will take into consideration the ease of finding of information on your websites. This is not only helpful for new visitors, it also helps prevent unnecessary clicking around. Some organizations have such complex websites that you cannot find information if you are not searching through their site from the outside.

Using the internet consumes time and wastes energy. Did you know that by avoiding a search with Google, or another search engine, you save energy equal to about 2 grams of CO2? Progressive internet providers offer a new product called “green hosting.” The CO2 emissions from running servers are compensated through development measures in schools, for example. They reduce tracks in the environment and enable learning for others.

It is a challenging task to keep a balance on the club website between general information for Non-Toastmasters and interesting news for members. Tor that reason, some clubs have an internal website where they provide specific information or pictures from meetings. Also keep in mind that publishing a newsletter is also a good training for Public Relations for any other organization. Finally, you also have the chance to cover parts of the Competent Leader program.

By the way, it is always helpful to ask first time visitors what they think about your website. Most of them have taken at least a short glance at it to check your meeting dates and location. You can easily get valuable information for improvement when welcoming your visitors. It is a good idea to discuss your club’s website if you can not think of anything else to talk about.

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How to keep a club’s website from being kidnapped Every now and then a problem occurs for some clubs that no one has really expected. A former or current member of the club (e.g. the webmaster) is the owner of the website and refuses to hand it over to the responsible person in the club.

In the worst case you don’t even have access to the provider and can´t update anything. Minor problems might be that you receive piles of spam mails as those technical devices are switched on or not included with the old provider. You are stuck in that situation as you always need the signature of the current owner of the website.

How can you keep the website in the club? First of all: only give over the rights of your website to members that you know. If a new member wants to maintain your website: that´s great and let him do so. However keep the ownership of the website (in detail: the URL) with the members you know for a longer while.

However, even those may every now and then move away or lose interest in Toastmasters. If you have bad luck, they leave with a feeling of conflict and are not interested in supporting the club any more. For these cases, be prepared with the old lawyers advice: define solutions for problems before you have them.

One solution could be that you set up a contract with the person that signs with the provider as owner of the website. In this contract you can write down that the website will be handed over on a specific date (e.g. 30th of June) to a person that will be assigned by the club board. Or, you hand it over to the president and she or he keeps it during the Immediate Past President time, as well. So, you don´t have to deal with paper work every year, every other year. Another possibility is to set up a contract that the current holder of the website URL signs, passing the ownership to somebody that the club board can assign at any suitable time.

Whichever route you take – regular change of ownership or handing over rights upon a club board’s decision – by having some kind of written contract, you improve the situation. There is a better chance of moving the website to persons you want to have control. You will simply prevent yourself from having long phone calls, endless discussions and long emails going back and forth.

In the worst case of not getting back your website: simply create a new URL and connect that to the Toastmasters and easy-Speak websites. That site will then show up when people search within Toastmasters websites as well as when they are searching from outside. The number of linked websites has an influence on the ranking in the search results. Therefore, the old website will disappear in the outskirts of information overflow. That includes lots of work. However, it is a possibility that always stays open for a club.

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Wangerooge Workshop: How to use space?

Each participant really liked the mix of workshop, entertainment and free time.

The beautiful landscape provided a calming feeling. This partly explains how the workshops and private discussions gave such long lasting impressions. Enough of praise, let´s take a look at the parts in detail.

Right from the start it became evident, the “Summer Workshop 2008” would be something special. At first, there were not so many registrations. Soon, the group grew larger quickly. Ingo knew the place well; he knew which tourist sites worth visiting. And, each of them was on schedule.

We spend our time in the summer camp three ways: workshops, tourist attractions and free time. We combined work with fun – that´s edutainment.

First came some WORKSHOPS: as always rehearsing our presentations and communication is item number one. We focused on such special topic as “How to use space?”. Each participant had the opportunity to discuss his or her own experiences with the group and to ask questions.

The discussion about the topics provided far more understanding than reading theory in a Toastmasters handbook. First we discussed theory. Then we listened to a speech, focusing our thinking on this topic. After talking about “how to use space”, there was a speech with special attention to using space appropriately. We could see how the theory put into practice.

We answered many questions about using space: Did you incorporate the room itself or a picture hanging on the wall into your speech? If you took a walk just before the speech, are you able to begin with a metaphor for “walking”?

We also talked about having too much movement. If you walk around like a tiger in a cage, you will appear restless. Also a good tip was “stage anchoring”. If the speech contains three main topics, you can combine a specific place in the room with each topic.

For example, if you speak about your first topic, your position in the room is at the left side. If you speak about your second topic, your position is at the center; etc. After a short while, your audience will associate a certain location with the topic, which will make things clearer.

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whether something was successful or not. We discussed different opinions and came to conclusion that there is sometimes more than one truth.

Second came the VISITS of ATTRACTIONS and LISTING to LOCAL STORYTELLERS: we examined rock-worm excrement in the watt and watched mussels which dig themselves in the mudflat! It´s real – no fisherman´s story! The rock-worm experts had different opinions whether the jettison-able tail of the rockworm really grows again after it has been biten of. But, that really has a meaning for the rock-worm itself.

After we escaped the mudflat, we entered a room on top of a 56 meter high tower to tell some horror stories. We to be rather silent, however, as there was a protected tower falcon just below us and the room was bit small anyway. So, we went back in our seminar room after we enjoyed the view at the ship routes in the sea. Back home we had a storytelling session and then played some games with werevolves and why-volves.

On the last day, a very experienced “mudflat-guide” (its Wattführer in German) did a dry excursion with us around the whole island. He told us how the island was created by water and sand and how it constantly changes its form. One story was about how fast you can get lost in the mudflat when fog appears. Sometimes dense fog encircles you within minutes. Then you have to have a compass to find the way back to the beach. Otherwise, you can get lost quickly. Once a mudflat guide got lost and the whole group of people he led nearly drowned. He had a compass, but the fork he was also carrying disturbed the compass! By chance, everybody was saved by the coastguard. Be sure not to be misled by your own instruments. Always be able to take an outside perspective on whatever you do and wherever you are, if you have the feeling to turn in circles or not to come forth. That´s the lesson learned from that story.

With an experienced guide, however, a mudflat tour is really fun. You should try it if you happen to visit Wangerooge or the Watt areas of Germany, the Netherlands or Danmark.

On the last day we also enjoyed a tour by a local historian. He led us to the center of the town in the middle of the island. The houses were moved here from the former town in the West which was constantly in danger after a great flood in the early 19th century. The new town was created at the highest point of the island in the eastern corner, so that it would take the sea some time to get through all the sand. Now the island is protected with dykes. Some think that, through this construction, the water is Clarion

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accelerated in a way, and that the island is presently endangered by that on the eastern parts. Lesson learned here: don´t streamline your flow of communication to much on one side – it will strike back through the unexpected backdoor.

The last part of our camp was the LEISURE TIME. want to get to know the other Toastmasters well? Do to prepare your next speech? Or, do you want to take the beach? Anything was possible. Here the lesson was the old finding, that you act better when you are

Do you you want a walk on learned balanced.

As I am writing these lines, I ask myself, did all this happen in only three days? Or, was it a week? We experienced the island from different positions on land and in dry (mud-)water, in historical, physical and social dimensions. We also used the time to listen to great speeches while travelling together in trains or while changing connections at stations. Yes – it was only a long weekend, but the organization, the people, the island fitted perfectly together. Including travel and accommodation we spend around 140 Euro – that was more than worth the money.

I really want to thank the Hannover Speakers for the opportunity to join on this summer camp! It was really fun!

Where do we go next?

The next weekend workshop on Spiekeroog island is already being planned by the club members.

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Speed-Dating with easy-Speak You are looking for someone to hook up with, right?

Someone who understands your needs. Yes, I’m talking about finding the right match for you! Well folks, you don’t have to look far... Just log on to your club’s easy-Speak system! Seriously! It’s that easy to find satisfaction.

Yes, the easy-Speak system can hook speakers up with the right evaluator. The one who knows the answers you are seeking, who knows the skills you want to develop.

That’s because, your VP Education can easily see who has done your project already, and who evaluated you the last time, and who has the most experience evaluating. We’ve harnessed the power of the internet.

It’s time for the changing of the guard.

Welcoming new club officers means training on how to use easy-Speak. Go ahead and today register them on the Club Officers page for your club so both outgoing and incoming officers have equal access in the system. That makes training easier.

Lucky for you all, the support team is here to provide online guided tours and seminars, and to help if you ever get stuck.

Of course, you can always look in the Information/Knowledge Map to find videos and explanations on how to HELP DESK schedule speeches and roles, tracking CC and CL award progress in the club, the storing of club documents and making communicating within and between clubs nice ‘n ‘easy.’

Your easy-Speak support team is constantly finetuning and installing new features as well. But, we need your help. Who would like to help with translating the vast knowledge base into various languages? Join the fun support team: on the helpdesk or with programming.

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We need your support!

Our team goal this summer is for each club to register all their officers on their club’s webpage at www.district59.eu.

This will simplify the district officers keeping you up to date on important developments. So, if your club is not yet listed in the system, or you want to activate the full-service package for your club, let us know. It is all free for you to use. By the way, prospective clubs should start on easy-Speak right from the beginning. So, why wait? Hook up with www.district59.eu today!

Ready to celebrate?

What did you achieve so far? Have you achieved your goals?

Will you achieve the Competent Communicator until June 30th?

Then be ready to take a break and look back. This is so important!

Goal setting starts with your vision – and your plan how to get there and it is an on-going process where you regularly check what you achieved.

Don´t just tick off you goal = achieved it! CELEBRATE IT! During my work with managers and even within Toastmasters I observe that most of them rush from goal to goal. As soon as they reached one goal they tick it off in their list like „Done that. Been there!“ and rush to achieve the next goal.

That way those people always watch the horizon and feel like they have to achieve even more – they feel never satisfied. And most of them feel even less competent.

In one session a manager set up a million Euro project – to build a hospital. He even asked me if he can mention humbly in his speech that it was his idea. When I asked further he told me how much work this was – how many people he had to pursuade to donor money for this project. But he considered it as a matter of course and did not value what he achieved.

I assigned him some homework: Sit down, look back and celebrate!

Regularly look back These days I cleared and cleaned my office thoroughly – with a friend. She sat there and looked at certificates and a lot of other stuff I collected. She was baffled and then I took a break and tried looking at it through her eyes. I also had considered all this as being a matter of course. I did not value or recognize what I achieved. It was so Clarion

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naturally to get this during my work that I never took the time looking back and recognizing how much it took me to get there.

Thank you very much, my friend to help me looking back. Sometimes another person is better to show you what you achieved.

Ask yourself: what have you done to achieve your goal?

Just putting together this list should show you what you can value. And even if you haven´t achieved your goal yet – or missed it by a short inch. Look at how far you have come and you will realize you are successful. Be it only in lessons learned. You are successful.

Celebrate!

Take your time and celebrate your success. Organize a party or just have a drink with some friends. Celebrate it.

If you are a club President – celebrate in your club what you have achieved and recognize your own and your member´s success! Party-on and have fun.

Ellen Hermens, DTM

Lieutenant-Governor Education & Training

PS: And for Clubs: remember to register your member´s awards asap to get the credits toward the Distinguished Club Program – I´d like to see all you clubs distinguished.

Thank you: For articles, pictures, comments, helpful feedbacks and general support thanks to Belinda Blay-Amihere, Bill Monsour, Ellen Hermens, Gernot Glawe and Navina Matthes.

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