Congratulations, Nick!

Nick Colón celebrated achieving his Competent Communicator AND his 30th birthday at tonight's meeting! This was a personal goal Nick set when he first joined Afterburners, and one he can now check off his to-do list. In my opinion, tonight's speech was the best he's ever presented (no pressure for the future, Nick!) and I look forward to many more Advanced Communicator projects from him. Way to go, Nick!

If I may, I'd like to offer a word of caution. We had a guest tonight and sadly, none of us walked her to the proper exit. Poor Holly became trapped between the inner and outer doors on the first floor and couldn't leave the building! Thankfully, we have club officer phone numbers on the agenda, and Holly called Rodney King. Rodney called Tammy Bailey, who called Holly back & stayed on the line with her while Brenda Daniels and Patricia Quick maintained visual contact with her through the first floor windows. The angel of the evening turned out to be Pat, the maintenance man who chases birds out of trees in the parking lot. He heard Patricia & Holly calling to each other through the door and came to the rescue, escorting Holly to the second floor parking lot entrance. She shared a hug with all of us and was extremely happy to be set free! If she was intimidated by public speaking before, who knows what opinion she'll have now, but my guess is she's much more brave than she knew she could be! In the future, let's be sure someone walks with our first-time guests to make sure they get safely to the exit and don't have to wander through the basement catacombs!

The Turkey Club Raids project gets going!

How many of you have ever attended another club’s meeting?

Years ago, District 25 offered a challenge to encourage club members to visit other Toastmaster clubs. The rules were simple. Take five of your members to another club, and you could walk out with that club’s banner. The only way for them to retrieve their banner was to send five members to attend the bandits’ meeting.

What if our club were to send five members to another club to deliver a turkey trophy we have created? We would get the raided club to swear to display it at their regular club meetings until they could send five members to unload it onto another club.

Here’s where you come in. I invite you to sign up for possibly all of the following committees. Each one will entail diverse levels of time and effort. For instance, expect the Naming Committee to be rather short-lived compared to the Aviator Design Committee. Whichever your choice, all are essential to the project’s success.

Guidance (Steering) Committee: These are a group of leaders who will help guide my leadership.

Naming Committee: Come up with a name for the game, our turkey, and the awards. Expect to work with the product produced by the Aviator Design Committee and the Awards Committee.

Aviator Design Committee: Dress up the bird to make it distinctively Afterburners.

Rules Committee: We’ll need official rules posted on our website and condensed rules to present to the raided clubs. District 25 will probably examine these as well.

Club Raid Presentation Committee: We’ll need a script to deliver ‘the bird’ to raided clubs and possibly to present to District 25. It needs to drive your audience to accept the challenge of displaying the trophy until they can arrange five members to deliver it to another club. Expect to train groups of five to entertain and challenge the raided clubs. Work with the Rules Committee.

Awards Committee: How can we recognize those clubs who accept and fulfill our challenge? Expect to work with the Naming Committee to select appropriate awards. Your task includes scripting the presentations.

What’s in it for you? Tammy has pointed out that all committee members and leaders can get credited in their Competent Leadership manuals. Leaders and presenters will also have speaking opportunities.

I encourage you to embrace this opportunity to voice your creative suggestions, to craft a one-of-a-kind turkey, and to lead a team of fellow members.

Bob Titiryn

Distinguished Club Program Progress Report

Each year, Toastmasters clubs around the world strive to achieve Distinguished status by meeting criteria set forth by Toastmasters International. These criteria measure how well a club is meeting the educational and leadership development needs of its members, and include the following:

1. Two Competent Communicators (completing the 10 speeches in the CC manual)

2. Two more Competent Communicators

3. One Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB), Advanced Communicator Silver (ACS), or Advanced Communicator Gold (ACG)

4. One more ACB, ACS, or ACG

5. One Competent Leader (CL), Advanced Leader Bronze (ALB) or Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM)

6. One more CL, ALB or DTM

7. Four new members

8. Four more new members

9. Minimum of four officers trained during each of two training periods

10. One membership dues renewal report and one club officer list submitted on time.

Clubs meeting five of these goals attain Distinguished Club status; clubs reaching 7 goals are recognized as Select Distinguished; clubs that achieve 9 of 10 are lauded as Presidents Distinguished Clubs.

Afterburners Club takes great and proper pride in achieving ALL TEN of these goals each year, and the sooner the better! Here's how we're doing since July 1 when the Toastmasters year began:

Goal #5, One CL, ALB or DTM: Tammy Bailey finished a CL manual on July 27.

Goal #7, Four new members: Ryan Gallagher, John Bacon, and Juan & Marla Tovar.

Goal #9, Minimum of four officers trained: All 7 of Afterburners officers were trained during this training period, so we will have another Super 7 ribbon to add to our banner! This must be done twice, so it counts as a half point.

We have 2.5 points toward our goal of 10, and the achievements keep accruing for the loud & proud Afterburners! Look for more updates as we advance toward Presidents Distinguished yet again!