Day two of the 2024 District 13 Spring Conference took place today. We had breakfast in the junior ballroom and listened to an excellent keynote speech from our presenter for the week, Distinguished Toastmaster and International Director Dawn Frail. She was a district director for District 60 in Toronto. She splits her time been Ontario and Nova Scotia.
Dawn’s speech was about “Making the Most of your M.A.P.” M is for Mastery; A is for Autonomy; P is for Purpose. She gave us great definitions and explanations. I love that she made reference to Harry Potter when she talked about JK Rowlng. I’ll be starting the sixth book late next week.
Our humorous speech contest came right after Dawn spoke and the contestants and contest officials were all briefed. It didn’t disappoint. We were laughing hard from all the speakers who provided us with humor in the contest. In the afternoon, we all attended a workshop on humor as well. It centered around the Entertaining Speaker manual and Jest Speaking member Patti Thor was the perfect Toastmaster to lead the discussion. A couple of things were added to the MUPPET acronym. The workshop introduced me to a new word called “SMUPPETS”. The speeches from the International Contest brought all sorts of emotion. I need to work on my humor though as I don’t think I’m very funny. That handout Patti gave us should help. So far, the weekend has been full of opportunity and I was ready to get away from home for a while. Last night’s trivia and today’s activities made the 2024 Conference worthwhile.
While Dawn did a great job with her presentations today, our other speaker Christy really hit home on some major points too. She asked us what our Toastmasters Why was, and what keeps us coming back. I learned that nothing grows in comfort zones, and I also learned about courage. When she talked about having courage in accepting that her son is transgender, I was right there with her. LGBTQ issues are important to me and I’m going through that too, being “Stylish”. I even told her that before she left and she was very happy to help in any way she could.
The dinner capped off a great conference weekend and we welcomed two new DTM’s into the fraternity with our own Michelle Teague as well as Division B Director Cassie Lebovitz. I threw in some money for the raffle but didn’t win anything. I also put in two tickets for prizes at Giant Eagle so maybe I’ll get lucky there instead. I spent a lot of time socializing after the banquet and looking ahead to future events. We have summer TLI coming up at the end of June when I start my vacation and in Greensburg, our officers are almost all set for next year.
Stylish 🍒 