Last week, we had trouble filling all our roles for our meeting.  The meeting ended up being well-attended, but somehow we just had trouble getting people to go to the Duty Roster and selecting roles.  This is actually not a new phenomenon and MAY have been compounded by the fact that we had made everyone an Administrator on the site recently, which changed the way most people are used to signing up for roles.  Either way, it was time to do something drastic.

I told the club that if we filled the remaining roles within the next 30 minutes, that I would serve as Toastmaster and that I would wear a funny hat doing it.

Well, that did it.  The roles were quickly filled.  So, I brought two ladies' hats with me to the meeting and alternately switched from one to the other as I Toastmastered the meeting.  I also made sure ot use as many hat-related phrases in the meeting ("throw your hat in the ring," "hat in hand," "here's your hat, what's your hurry," "hat's off," "wearing two hats," etc.).  It got groans, but it was a good time.  One speech evaluator and the General Evaluator even borrowed the hats when they had the floor.  It was fun how it caught on!  Hey, whatever works! 

In other news, the elections have come and gone and I, indeed, won Vice President Education after running unopposed.  The first meeting after we had our swearing in ceremony, I was on vacation.  That was the first meeting I missed since joining in February.  Apparently, I missed a really good guest speaker (Mike Davis), but am looking forward to the work ahead as I begin to look at what the role entails more seriously.  I just put the word out for volunteers to join an Education Committee, so hopefully I'll get a little help in doing it all.

Included in the help I'll need is planning for the upcoming Humorous Speech and Table Topics contests.  I was a bit surprised that these come up so immediately after a change in regime.  I wasn't aware of them immediately (being a Toastmaster for under a year), so I feel like I'm scrambling now to make it happen.  I contacted our Area Governor for contacts at the other clubs in our area.  I figure maybe we could trade judges, among other things.  The contest could use up to 13 volunteers (from Sergent at Arms, to judges, to timers, to Toastmaster, to counters, etc.) and if our club does ALL of those things, no one will be left to compete!

...and I still haven't read ALL of the "When You're Vice President of Education" manual yet!  Help! :)