On Saturday, July 28th, Jazzmin, Martin E, Maritn S, Günter, JP and myself attended the Officers Training that Division F (South-West Germany) offers twice a year. The goal was to bring the new boards of officers from all 18 Clubs together and to prepare club leaders for their respective role.
Apart from the regular briefings about the respective officer roles there were engaging workshops about various topics around public speaking. We also got to know the new leadership team of Division F. On the team of Division Govenor Kees Broos there is also our friend and fellow club member Jazzmin Hecht in her new role as Area Govenor F2.
A vey positive aspect of these trainings is that it is a great occasion to get to know the other clubs a bit better: How are their Toastmasters Clubs different? An example: Annerose is a colleague of mine in the role of Club President. Her club is “Rhetorikclub Bergstraße“, which is located in Bensheim (members also come from Lorsch, Zwingenberg, Laudenbach, Heppenheim and Weinheim). We talked for some time and discovered that our clubs can learn a lot from each other! We at “Mannheim International” do especially well with respect to attracting guests to our club and turning guests into members. Rhetorikclub Bergstraße on the other hand has a very small turnover rate in their membership – their members seldom drop out and many stay in the club for a loooong time. So what are planning is to visit each other’s meetings from time to time and to see how we can combine both strengths.
Summing up, the Officers Training is always worth attending. I’d like to encourage members to join us the next time when the chance arises (should be in January/February 2013), as these trainings are open to all interested Toastmasters.
Looking forward to seeing you all at our special event “Trash Toastmasters” tomorrow evening, which is helt together with our sister club “Rhetorikclub Mannheim”. For one evening we’re going to be completely out of bounds: There’s going to be a reversed agenda and politics, religion and sex are NOT a no-go as a topic. This is going to be FUN! Promised! 🙂
Cheers
René Fritsch
President