Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part IV

With a healthy member size and steady influx of guests at every meeting, it was time for me to work on the attitude of the officers and the club as a whole.

The Officer Handbook and Expense Subsidies
Toastmasters Headquarters provided handbook for each officer. They were wordy and applicable mostly to clubs in North America. I broke the lengthy documents into bullet points and modified the duties to suit Hsinchu Club. Off site trainings were then conducted over dinner or lunch with all expenses paid from the club treasury. We also decided to entice the officers to attend Area level officer’s trainings by providing travel and meal subsidies.

The Distinguished Club Program
For a club to be successful, the accomplishment must be measurable. The Toastmasters Organization, in its infinite wisdoms, devised 10 achievements to measure a club’s success in leadership, teamwork, education, recruitment, and paperwork. An achievement of 5 out 10 is considered as successful. My goal was to attain that goal. Paperwork, recruitment, and teamwork (officer training) were easy, but getting members to complete their education program was tough. I had to push a C6 member to complete 4 more speeches and a C8 member to come up with 2. Funny it may sound; it was the C8 member who gave me the hardest time. He waited until the very last meeting of my presidency to complete his C10 speech. Nevertheless, the club got its Distinguished Club Award.

The Christmas Party
President sets the tone of the club. I liked to see our club as place where people can mingle, network, and at same time, pick up their communication and language skills. I wanted the words to get out, not through the website or fax, but through the month of every member. Christmas celebration seemed like a good starting point for members to invite their friends. The main attraction of the party was a raffle with first prize of NT$3,000 in cash! The cash was encased in a block of ice to symbolize the “Cold Hard Cash”. Winners had to break the ice to get to the prize. The party was a success; I got 2 more members out of it.

The District Involvement
For the past 5 years, Hsinchu club never participated in any speech contests; we couldn’t even get members to agree on a club level competition. We never sponsored any officer trainings; our officers always had to travel to another city, which was one of reasons attendance was so poor. So I volunteered to sponsor an officer training in Hsinchu even though I knew I could be the only person putting the show together. Fortunately, Bruce was kind enough to help. Despite the home court advantage, we only had 4 officers in attendance whereas Taoyuan club had 7 plus 3 more tag along members. ChungLi Club only had 3.

I guess my attitude must have moved the heart of officers and members, I started to see more attendance and more enthusiasm but when I told them Hsinchu was going to sponsor the Area Speech Contest, I quickly realized my optimism was premature; no one in the club would participate but the officers agreed to prepare the venue under the condition that I represent Hsinchu as the contestant. The contest went well; I won the area contest. A month after, I also won the 2nd place in the Division contest, which meant I was one of the finalists in the District Contest also. Yes, we only had 4 divisions at that time; each division needed 2 contestants for the District contest. Although I didn’t get anywhere in the District contest, but I made lasting impression with district officers. From that day on, Hsinchu club was no longer anonymous; we finally emerged from our shell.

Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part III

It appears from the SWOT that the root of the problem is lack of members. Members bring varieties and energy to the club which in turn attracts more members. Large membership means more qualified officers can be elected to manage the club. Our goal was therefore to put together a membership drive to improve our membership stand.

The key to promote anything is marketing. Marketing is expensive. But cyberspace marketing is relatively low cost. Public Relation (PR) doesn’t necessarily cost money. One just has to find ways to publicize Hsinchu Toastmasters without putting a dant on the club treasury.

The Toastmaster Hsinchu Website
In the September 2000, Hsinchu Toastmasters website was officially launched. A string of keywords was embedded in the HTML code, mostly to do with English learning even though in my heart I knew Toastmasters mission is to do with communication and leadership. I even put Hess English School, Jordon English School, KOJEN English Language School as keywords to attract would be English students. The same set of keywords was repeated in Chinese. The idea was that whenever a person search for anything related to English learning, our website will appear first. I also indexed our site with all the major search engines at the time such as Yahoo!, Google, Openfind, Yam, Lycos, AltaVista, and Excite.

The WinFax marketing
In my search for no cost marketing, I came to learn that there was a certain Mr. Lin, a past VP of Public Relation 3 terms before who demonstrated overwhelming success with fax marketing. Having met with him for few hours, we put togethered a plan to periodically fax to all the companies in the Science Park and all the schoools in the Hsinchu district. The act of faxing was easy, but entering fax numbers and updating them in the WinFax database was a real chore; it took me an entire week. (But this was nothing compare with the time I spent putting the website together).

The Grand Science Park Magazine
The Grand Science Park Magazine is the most the popular magazine in Hsinchu. It is distributed free at all companies in the Science Park, major resident estates, and restaurants. I contacted the chief editor to publish an article on Toastmasters but was turned down because an article on Toastmasters was published only a year prior. (Good job former President Chris Chang). But instead she allowed Toastmasters to appear at “What’s New” column.

For a month or so, nothing! then it happened. I began to receive phone calls and enquiries, mostly from fax initially and then the website. By November 2000, we added 8 new members. Andrew Budai and Paul Chang were among them.

Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part II

A little voice told me that running a club is no different from running a company. Since I ran a somewhat successful business in the past, I decided to put my experience to work. The SWOT analysis is a simple diagnostic tool that I used a lot at work.

Strength
1. Free venue, we can continue indefinitely without incur extra cost
2. Located in the heart of the Science Park with potential member pool of 20,000 highly educated people
3. A president with past experience managing Toastmasters club in the USA
4. A president who will not quit
5. $80,000 cash flow in the club treasury

Weakness
1. Lack of membership variety; most members are engineers
2. Lack of passion to volunteer as club officers
3. Other than the treasurer, all other officers are either inactive or quit
4. Location of venue is hard to find, and in bad shape
5. Officers have no idea what their duties are
6. Lack of enthusiasm to participate in the area, division, and district functions
7. Lack of focus, mission, and goals

Opportunity
1. Learning English is becoming a popular activity in Taiwan among adults
2. Toastmasters program works better than conventional English classes
3. President’s specialty is eMarketing
4. National universities in Hsinchu and employee at the Science Park account for large online population

Threat
1. It takes a village to save a club, not just a person
2. Club is under the threat of probation
3. Toastmasters is largely unknown to the general population as a whole
4. Traffic of the Science Park serves as a deterrent for people who works outside of the park

The SWOT gave me a snapshot of the health of the club. What need to be done next is to set goals, device a plan, and execute.

I Create, I Own, I Love

A friend of mine sent me a set of photos he took from a trip to the ancient Angkor stone city in Cambodia. They were very nice pictures indeed. I downloaded all of them to the collections of photos that I have but labeled the folder Angkor+ the name of my friend. I did this because I felt the photos are not mine; I did not take them on my own.

Come to think of it, that has been my attitude towards photos all along. I remember purchasing slides from NASA on several celestial bodies, but I never got to really enjoy them because they were not my personal work. Ironically, to own a picture of Saturn and its ring at that magnification is not possible even with the most expensive commercial equipment.

Now I know why people will risk their lives rescuing old pictures, paintings, or letters in a blazing fire; we simply value things that we created.
I guess this is why it’s easy to divorce your spouse but hard to disown you children.
It’s easy to change your job but hard to throw away your career.
After all, our love for all things, inanimate or living, is merely a manifestation of our own creation.

FujiDog

My wife has been trying to adopt a dog in the University where she worked. It is a median sized, short haired black dog with fuzzy dark brown fur around her neck. She has long snout, skinny but strong legs. My wife likes her because the dog exhibits all the mannerism of a strong leader.

For days, we labored to entice her to eat from a bowel we provided for her. Eventually we were able to put a flee collar on her and a heart shaped tag with contact information and her name- “FujiDog”. The reason we call her FujiDog is because she looks just like the shopkeeper’s dog in the nearby Fuji Photo Studio.

For the next few days, FujiDog became a regular at my wife’s office. One day, we realized her collar was gone and her visit to my wife’s office became more sporadic until one day she disappeared all together. Rumor has it that FujiDog is being adopted by a group of students in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

“The love from many is better than the love from one,” my wife told me sullenly. Somehow we did not find the rumor creditable; FujiDog is obviously not on the campus ground. The sad thing is we didn’t even have a picture of her to remember her by.

Couple of months later, when my wife and I paid a visit to the campus humane society with our donation, we casually asked the students whether they have seen FujiDog.
“You mean the young bitch with brown fuzzy fur! She was one of the dogs contracted canine plaque that wiped out half of the dogs on campus couple of months ago. We had to put her to sleep!” said one of the volunteers.

My wife broke down and cried. As for me, I held my sadness well. The truth hurts, but at least I found some comfort through a timely closure.
FujiDog is in a better place, I am sure.