Posted by Freddie Daniells
(This is a long post so make sure to get a cup of coffee and a comfy seat!)
And so another conference is over. And yet again a great time was had by all.
For me the things kicked off on on Wednesday. Following was our regular Division B Council meeting, it was off to the Princess Louise pub to join our Area 33 Governor, Eleanor Smith, to celebrate her 21st yet again. Then a Brazilian bar and restaurant where much more wine, beer and a little food was imbibed. As ever, the usual reprobates were led by our Division B governor, Dick Dixon. Please see photo!
Thursday was a sore head and a flight to Kerry Airport via Stansted. We tried to involve the plane in an impromptu table topics session but Ryanair were having none of it. That night, the town was awash with Toasties.
First thing Friday, a lot of very bleary eyed folks arrived fresh from a 7am flight from Stansted. The hotel was now in full TM swing. Mrs Fred and I escaped on a coach trip around the Ring of Kerry - highly recommended if you are planning coming this way.
Surprisingly, I awoke on Saturday morning bright and early (for me) with no more than a slight foggy head. A solid brekkie and then off to the workshops.
I started with a thought provoking workshop from Past District Governor, David Thompson entitled 'Motivating Ourselves, Motivating Our Members'. A key focus was on how we can help maintain our existing members as they grow through the TM programme.
The second workshop I attended as The Art of Writing Humorous Speeches delivered by Mike O'Donnell. Mike highlighted the need to keeping an eye open for humour, the power of exaggeration, the use of characters in humour and the importance of building stories. A really fun knockabout session!
Then off to the District Council meeting. This is where a lot of the official business of Toastmasters is discussed. The key highlights as far as Division B is concerned were:
- A slight re-alignment of Clubs and Areas in London
City of London Speakers is to become part of Area 34 while Berkeley Square is to become part of Area 6. London has been so successful in creating and promoting new clubs that there has needed to be a re-alignment of clubs to ensure a more balanced set of Areas.
- A new group of people running Toastmasters in the UK
Gary Sander was confirmed as the new District Governor, responsible for the growth and success of TM across all of the UK and Ireland. Joe Gibbs is to become the new Lt Governor for Education and Training, Teresa Dukes the new Lt. Governor for Marketing and James Hegarty joined the committee as District PR Officer. As far as the Divisions are concerned the appointees are:
Division A - Caroline O'Connor
Division B - er, me
Division C - Kate Thornhill
Division D - Pat Foley
Division E - Michael J Clarke
Division F - Deirdre O'Brien
Division G - Sandra Lawes
Division H - Samantha Babister
- Finance is still available for clubs
Money is still available to be claimed by both new clubs and those that are at risk of failing. If you think you may qualify get in touch with your Area Governor asap!
The next conference is called the Three Castles conference and is being held in Kilkenny, Ireland. It sounds a lot of fun - details are here. It will be held on November 7-9 - put it in your diary! Next year sees the conferences return to the UK. They will be held in Oxford in May and York in November. Plans are afoot to make them even bigger and better than before.
After lunch, the keynote was by Dr. Ed Walsh, Founding President of Limerick University, a leading thinker in the re-generation of Ireland over the past twenty years and most importantly a former Toastmaster! He gave a fascinating insight into why Ireland had succeeded economically and what he felt were the big challenges ahead facing Ireland.
Phew - my lunchtime beer was making me sleepy but I had no time for that as now was the 2008 UK and Ireland finals of the International Speech Contest. I have to say the venue was probably the most scary I have seen for one of these contests as you can see below. Westlife are playing exactly the same stage in a few weeks time - take a look below, you get the idea!

The back part was screened off but, by heck, I didn't envy those people up there!
The speaking was top notch. The first two speakers gave serious speeches with a strong message. The third speech was a wonderfully poetic look at the speaker's love of the sea. Our Division B candidate David Jones was next. I think he suffered a little from being the first with a more humorous speech - it took a while for the audience to get attuned to the lighter tone. However, he did a great job. And in no time we had shot through the remaining speeches.
As ever there has to be a winner. This year I was glad that I was not a judge. Often you can discount a few of the speakers but this time it would have been so hard. But the winner was Sultan Nazir from Dublin with a speech called Fail, Fail, Fail.
After the excitement of the contest we had a little downtime so I decided to go to the gym. Unfortunately, I had to cross the main foyer of the hotel and my rather fancy lycra shorts caused much mirth (can't do much when in the gym, so might as well look good getting there!).
In the evening was the gala dinner - dry ice, dancing girls, big band, plenty of laughs, a late night disco, a beer or two (just to refresh me from my run) and suddenly it was 4am and time for bed. I left, as ever, our Division B Governor, Dick Dixon, leading from the front still strutting his stuff. Various pics from the evening are below.If you would like to see a larger one just click on the image.

Sunday morning and I had (for some reason) volunteered to be a timekeeper for the Evaluation contest. This meant I had to be downstairs at 8.30am for the briefing. Iain Duthie, our Asst Div Guv, was there looking chipper as ever. He had had no sleep at all. How does he do it??
Following my much needed fry-up (off the diet this weekend!) I realised that I was still in sleep deficit mode so back to bed for an hour. I gather Lucia's workshop on The Value of Positive Feedback was very good.
So now for the final event of the weekend - the Evaluation contest. Apart from a screw up with the timing lights (oh, yes, that was my job), everything went very smoothly.
Until, that is, after all the contestants had given their evaluations. The contest chair invited each contestant back on stage to ask a few questions and hand them their certificates of participation. After the first couple we noticed a bit of movement in the crowd. After a minute or two the reason became clear - a leak had sprung from the roof onto the audience! After a few minutes (and as it got much worse) it was decided to stop the proceedings. We had only just cleared that part of the room when the roof panels collapsed!
We quickly re-arranged another room and 300 or so of us de-camped there. Anyhow, we finally got to the winners and yes, our very own Division B contestant Hilary Briggs won. All the folks at my table were from Division B and we let out a large shout as it was announced. Carol West, President of Grosvenor Square, was ecstatic as Hilary was representing their club - see Carol and Hilary below.
All in all, it was a great way to round of a brill weekend. We all staggered through customs and wearily back to our homes. I imagine everyone slept well that night.
Hopefully, you too may think about coming to Kilkenny in November or Oxford next May. If so, I will see you there!