District 67 Fall Conference 2014

District 67 Fall Conference 2014 started with the welcome dinner in honor of Keynote Speaker Barbara Khozam, AS, and Regional 13 Advisor Kazuko Kawauchi, DTM, at Hotel Nationaom Taipei to Taichung. The food was so yummy that I was really honored to join the huge table for two dozens Toastmasters hosted by Distrcit 67 Governor Eric Liang, DTM!

Saturday morning, I got on the charter bus at Red Valley station in Taichung at 8:20 to pick up Toastmasters from all over Taiwan at Wurih High Speed Rail Station at 9. Upon my invitation, Toastmaster Forever Young Mike Yang, DTM conducted a good-to-know-you session. Every member was given a chance to give a self-introduction and to promote individual club. It felt great to make acquaintance with many Toastmasters on the way to Hsiangyuan Conference Center.

In order to support the contestant from Division H, I went to the Humorous Speech Run-off Contest Group B at Room 201. Toastmaster Joseph Calpin from TGIF Toastmasters Club, Area H1, did a wonderful job and seized the seat to compete at the District final humorous speech contest.

After lunch, Toastmaster Barbara Khozam gave a 50 minutes keynote speech on "Zap Negativity and Ignite Yourself, Your Life and Your Results" at Room 101 with a consecutive interpreter. In order to take care of non-English speaking members, Fall Conference Organizer used consecutive interpretation. I didn't like the keynote speech being interrupted from time to time. Fortunately I heard Barbara speech for the second time. The first time time was at Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) Thursday noon, November 20th, followed by a warm gathering with a couple senior diplomats at MOFA Cafe' accompanies by MOFA Toastmasters Club's Immediate Past President Charles Teng and Incumbent President Jenny Tseng.

In her keynote speech, Barbara encouraged the audience to do whatever works for us. She showed us how to bite a pen between upper and lower teeth to exercise the smiling muscle on face. She told me to hold ten seconds when we responded to people's compliments about us. She told us that attitude can be trained if we have it done deliberately for consecutive 21 days. She also told us to how to cure the grumpy face syndrome (GFS) by wearing the imaginary happy pants.

Immediately after the Japanese humorous speech contest at Room 102, I rushed to Barbara's workshop "From Boss to Leader--Leadership Skills for Busy People" at Room 201. The room was fully packed with people. I had to stand at the back. Then I returned to Room 101 to see the English Evaluation Contest. Toastmaster Irene Chen from Hong Kong was the test speaker. Her topic is "Stand Tall". It was about her conquer of acrophobia in life. Haishuo Lee won the evaluation contest, Lester Lin the first runner-up, David Goodman the second runner-up.

After the banquet dinner party and award presentation, Grand's President Jenny Chen and I were invited to the 2nd party to celebrate Lester Lin's 58th birthday at their rented 2 stories Apartment 70. Lester was loved by TGIF Toastmasters Club, the club he chartered in October 2013. TGIF Toastmasters Club is regarded as the best Toastmasters in District 67. I was the proud Area H1 Governor when TGIF was born. Toastmaster Ching Wen Huang from TGIF took a photo of me while I introduced myself. I love the photo with vintage and aging effect with Lester and Jenny looking at me with admiration.

Sunday morning, Jenny and I attended two workshops after breakfast at a small countryside shop near Hsiangyuan Conference Center. We luckily grabbed the seats at the first row. Barbara talked about "Speaking Your Truth with Toastmasters". She introduced the equation: E (Event) + R (Response) = O (Outcome) by Jack Canfield (Co-Creator Chicken Soup for the Soul Book Series). She pointed out how to use the pause at the triggering point + to control the response in order to get the desirable outcome. It's not about the event, but about the response to affect the outcome. We need to change our thinking, the images we hold in our heads, and our behaviors, in order to achieve the outcome we want.

Kazuko talked about how to build a healthy team. Her purpose was to establish a collaborative, cohesive and comfortable (3C's team) by identifying five traits of a healthy team, including trust, healthy conflict, commit, accountability, and results. After she asked the participants to answer the DISC* personality test to identify four behavioral styles, Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Compliance. She called upon five people from each behavior style to come to the stage and asked us to study the similar behavioral pattern in each group.

The DISC Personality test is based on the work of renowned psychologist Dr. William Moulton Marston, and was introduced in his 1928 book "Emotions of Normal People". In 1940, Walter Clark took the theory of William Moulton Marston and developed the first DISC Assessment. And it is still the same DISC Assessment that is still in use today! The DISC assessment can be used to determine leadership. There are different leadership methods and styles that coincide with each personality type, which could help leaders be more effective.

After lunch, I went to Mandarin & Taiwanese humorous speech contests, followed by English humorous speech contest. I like the quality of Mandarin and English humorous speech contests. The language skills of Taiwanese and Japanese speakers were deteriorating. No wonder no more Hakka speech contest was held any more. Many congratulations to Haishuo Lee for winning the double championship in 2014. Haishuo has been in charge of District 67's Speakers Bureau for the past few years. He deserved a big round of applause.

Before the closing ceremony, Jenny invited Irene Chen and me to ride with Anna back to Taipei. We talked all the way from Taichung to Hsin-tien. Irene shared with us her valuable and keen observations of Taiwanese Toastmasters and Toastmasters in Hong Kong and China. Many thanks to Anna of World Mosaic Toastmasters Club for giving us a ride back to Taipei before 7 o'clock.

Remarks:
*Dominant (D) Direct, outspoken, results-oriented, a leader, problem-solver; Influencing (I) Friendly, outgoing, talkative, optimistic, the life of the party, people-oriented; Steady (S) Team player, stable, consistent, maintains the status quo, peacemaker, family-oriented, patient; Compliant (C) Logical, organized, data-driven, methodical, perfectionist, detail-oriented.