1. Average age of a Toastmaster worldwide is 47. Does that mean young folks don't think this is important or are they not aware of it or simply we have not reached out to that audience?. In any case, the age explains why the social media uptake is so low! My Toastmasters club has individuals who are 20 years old to members with 20 year Toastmasters experience.
2. The District 60 has 5000 members and only 10 percent are on social media
3.Revenue for a a TM district is primarily from club memberships and conference. The district makes about 194K in revenue. About 96K is from membership fees.
4.The District gave an early bird '$99' to drive more registrations this time. They made it a 1 day event (which I think makes sense). The turn out was still low that they had expected
5. There were about 360 folks today, about 180 of which were first timers. I thought this was pretty cool.
6.Personally, I think there is too much focus and pressure on Distinguished Status. Perhaps, as the revenue is tied to membership, that could be a reason.
7.I saw some folks get DTM and were awarded a medallion while some good music ("eye of the tiger") was playing in the background. DTM is the highest level at Toastmaster.They had a "hug " line with past DTMs cheering and hugging them as they joined the exclusive club. I thought it was cool!
8.Emergencies can strike anytime. The fire alarm blew up and at about 5 pm, and everyone was asked to exit out. A tough moment for the organizers. My wife was at home, so I went back. The event did resume but I could not attend it.
9.The guest communication and leadership recipient was Dr Ophira Ginsburg. She had a pretty inspiring speech about how she encourages women in Bangladesh to undertake breast cancer examination. Her logic was that in the west, breast cancer is detected early and in about 90 percent of the case, it is fixed. In the emerging markets, this is identified very late and sometimes can't be treated.
I was a first timer and on this was a good use of my Saturday. Was it worth the money? Hmmm...perhaps the 99$!
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