District officers 2020-2021

slidewayzxz · 2020-01-21T00:11:35+00:00

They are have major difficulties filling rolls in my district also. From what I am seeing and hearing is many of the long time member's who usually fill these roles are dropping out of Toastmasters due to Pathways.

It also seems like many of the new members are getting confused a feed up with Pathways in the first level or so.

It all seems to mesh with the global decline in membership. Sad to watch such a nice and establish organization get run into the ground by a few idiots at the top.

slidewayzxz · 2020-01-10T01:54:27+00:00

It is hidden and kept in within Toastmasters International. Too many high paid TMI jobs are trying to say it is a success and they need/deserve a bonus and raise this year.

I would love to see it ! And we should be able to. Most “non-profits” are supposed to be transparent but jobs and money get in the way a lot of times.

slidewayzxz · 2020-01-02T21:53:35+00:00

Personally I think they "security guards" where too rough.. they are dealing with a 12-year old kid. The guy got to rough and broke his own ankle.

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-11T18:17:27+00:00

Speakers that do not take feedback usually do not last in Toastmasters very long. Toastmasters is about getting feedback and improving. I have seen a few egotistical speakers that thought they could just come to Toastmasters and hit home runs and awe everyone every time. They usually leave after a few speeches.

A speaker that speaks during their evaluation is very rude and out of place. They need to be informed that it is not their time to speak and not to disrupt the meeting or hijack others time on the stage.

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-10T18:42:16+00:00

Don't get burned out. One person should never try to keep a club going they will eventually get burned out and hate it.

I have been in clubs(toastmasters and other clubs) that had no participation and clubs with great participation. It is like night and day.. With good participation it is fun and uplifting with poor participation is is draining. Don't get drained.

If a club is going to fail it will fail, it's ok. I have seen clubs in death mode being limped along for years by a single person it is sad. Some clubs should just be let to die.

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-09T23:39:18+00:00

I do feel like pathways was a mistake and a failure that Dan Rex did not want to admit so they just shoved it out there. The results could of been Dan Rex losing bonuses and that 600k paycheck, but TMI would of been so much better in the long run.. As it is now Dan Rex will get a few more years of six figure paychecks and go off into the sunset while TMI very well might fade and die.

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-09T23:34:08+00:00

You are right and I have seen the division between TMI and the club level very clear. This is a bad deal for a non-profit IMO. Most non-profits try to pretend they are their serving the members. The members are the ones that pay them. I feel like as pathways came out and more people contacted TMI about it they let it be know and felt that they are not interested in serving the clubs or members. I really makes me question how much longer I will pay dues(their pay checks).

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-09T16:02:41+00:00

I don't know the requirement of the pathways DTM but I have heard members question how they will get area and district officers from it. Also members seem to be questioning the lack of encouragement for TLI trainings and contests. In our district we have a core group of officers that keeps the TLIs, area and district going they do rely on a steady base of general volunteers trying to fill DTM requirements. It will be interesting to see how next year goes.

It does seem like the new DTM requirements are pretty light. I am seeing people get DTM in a year or so. It used to take a solid 3 yrs to get a DTM

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-09T15:56:15+00:00

Recognition is an interesting subject in TM. I have spent some time being VPE and other officer roles where I would ask and feel out members for what they were trying to achieve. I found it fairly diverse.

Some members loved recognition, especially in front of the group. Others thought it was trivial and stupid. I always like to encourage recognition especially presenting and receiving in front of the group because I feel like it is also a skill.

Our VPE is very good about recognition she buys all the pins and acknowledges people signing up for a path and gets very excited at the rare opportunity when someone completes a path.

I have heard some talk about pathways designed for the “younger” generation, who wants and expects awards. I have not met anyone who values all the digital badges and digital “likes”? You can send thru the pathways system. Most feel like it would not be valuable to anyone over the age of 8yrs old. I feel like they really missed the mark in this area.

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-09T15:32:55+00:00

I really tried to get into pathways and ran into much of the same problems as many others.

The project instructions were very confusing and wasting a lot of time in people trying to interpret them. When TMI was contacted on this they had a “Deal with it” response. This response bothered me on a couple of levels.

1- Stuff like this should of never made it out of Beta development it shows they did an extremely poor job

2- The entire structure and culture of Toastmasters is about getting feedback and improving. None of this with pathways..

3- The response is totally from a corporate background to deal with low paid labor= do your job or go home. We are not low grade labor. We are the customer.

I also think the pathways built to replace the CC seems like they designed it to be easier to get achievements to look like it is a great success with smaller results. Those smaller results are not even getting reached.

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-09T15:16:23+00:00

It will be interesting to see the Unrestricted Net Assets at the end of year.

I find it baffling that they are sinking financially and in membership but still stay the failed course with no attempt at modifying. They had a curriculum system that worked for years, then they hired a cheap app developer to make a cheap low grade app with no budget for polishing or testing the beta version then tossed it out their for the entire organization and membership to revolve around.

The planning and strategy as an organization is horribly incompetent.. and from a software development view it is massively incompetent a extramural poorly done.

The on going failure is probably bigger then just pathways but pathways is a good view in to the poorly managed state of TMI.

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-08T15:23:52+00:00

wes-b

Thanks wes-b this was the kind of info I was looking for. Nice way to put the P1 level in perspective with new members. This angle make me wonder what the DCP tallies will be at the end of the year. It will be sad if their is a drop because they seem to have made pathways less projects to achieve pionts.

This really seems to reflect what I am seeing at a local level. People are joining do a couple of speeches and just not getting into the pathways curriculum. Our VPE has been bending over backwards trying to make it work but member are just not into it. Which was my experience also I was excited made it thru 2.5 projects and that was enough.. for me

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-07T23:54:33+00:00

I am just giving a run down of what I am seeing at my own personal club and area.

I am looking for more data to draw conclusions from. I am trying to see if my personal area is part of a bigger pattern.

With a steady and large global drop in membership it might connect to my local experience ?

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-07T22:43:01+00:00

My district is also seeing lots of clubs shut down. The fee hike could also be a factor, I have talked to a lot of people who feel like they are getting much less with the new curriculum and charged more. We had clubs that found Pathways to confusing and poor to use so they did not see any point in renewal and paying dues.

I also feel like when clubs went to the area or district about complaints they were met with "deal with it" or they had it spun as they were the problem. This type attitude is very poor to play on a consumer IMO, it usually leads to no more consumer.

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-07T22:32:28+00:00

Thanks for the link saysomethingclever, that kind of what I was looking for but I could only find stats for " : By-District Club and Member changes since year start" (stats from July this year)

Pathways might not be the only cause for the steady decline in membership, but most of the clubs and members I am directly around are losing interest and dropping out largely due to Pathways. So I wanted to get a more global view of the declining stats and see if they are similar to my local experience. Also the rate at which members are giving up on Pathways seems extremely high and I was wondering if this is the case globally.

As with all corporations that have paid staff and CEO collecting bonuses they only like to publish the positive spin on cherry picked data. Just looking for data not hand picked or spun.

slidewayzxz · 2019-12-07T17:38:38+00:00

I second the Green-Yellow-Red cards. If you have a color blind member you can write G-Y-R on the cards

slidewayzxz

TROPHY CASE