Supercharging towards Distinguished Toastmaster

I wrote in a previous post that there were certain things I was unwilling to sacrifice in order to attain the target of 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo.

One of those things that I was not willing to give up was my involvement in the District 86 Toastmasters Fall Conference held in November.

I had attended a couple of District conferences before, but the 2012 Fall Conference was the first one for which I was there for the entire conference and was also the first one in which I was involved in the planning committee.

Meeting artist Dave Sopha at District 86 Toastmasters Fall Conference

As District Public Relations Officer I had the opportunity to meet the Communication and Leadership Award recipient, artist Dave Sopha and introduce him at the C&L Luncheon.

One of my personal take-aways from the conference was the inspiration and motivation to supercharge my progress towards my Distinguished Toastmasters designation (DTM). I learned that I could accelerate my progress towards ACS and ACG by getting evaluations for presentations I would be doing anyways, outside my Toastmasters chapter.

At the BNI chapter I attend in Niagara Falls I was scheduled to give a ten minute presentation on the social media business I’m involved in. Evaluation!

For that same day I was asked to give a speech at the nearby Brock University Toastmasters chapter. Evaluation!

Both of these presentations came up the Wednesday after the end of the conference. Thus in less than a week after the conference I had completed two projects that count towards my ACS.

A week and a half later the District Governor asked me to give a presentation at the District Executive Council meeting. Evaluation!

By then there were two meetings left at my home Toastmasters club before our Christmas social and holiday break. I booked myself to give a speech at each of those meetings.

For the first one I did an Interpretive Reading project. I prepared several scenes out of my novel-in-progress Mission: Dawn. I greatly enjoyed sharing those scenes and introducing my characters to my audience. Evaluation!

For the second one I did the Off The Cuff project. I had the most anxiety around that one – how would I prepare for an Off The Cuff speech? I selected my five topics of which I would be asked to speak on one, chosen by my evaluator. As it turns out, the topic he selected was Bruce Trail. Out of the five topics I selected, that was the easiest one for me to speak on. What I had to say on that topic was practically a prepared speech. Evaluation!

And so it turns out that in less than a month since the conference I have completed five out of ten projects towards my ACS.

If I plan carefully, I think it is a realistic goal to complete DTM in 2013.

Related articles

• Journey through Toastmasters. (parwatisingari.wordpress.com)
• Hosting Toastmaster Time Television (exec-comms.com)
• What is Toastmasters About? (toastmastersinverness.com)