7/16/20
West Virginia was a very difficult state to visit. We wanted to visit a club outside our home district. Many of the clubs in West Virginia are closed clubs. We contacted one club that never responded to us. This was our last state and then we will have completed our journey of visiting a club in all 50 states.
Needless to say I was very impatient. I was afraid clubs would start meeting in person soon and I will have lost my chance of meeting my goal. That impatience drove me to get on Facebook to see if I could find any clubs in West Virginia to visit. This is how I found Mountaineer Toastmasters. This club was also proving hard to visit.
It’s like some Toastmasters are viewing their club as a secret club with a secret handshake and password and only the elite get to be a part of it. I just don’t understand the secrecy. There was no Zoom link on their website or Facebook page. I sent a message to the president through Facebook and also in the comment section of their Facebook page but no one responded to me either.
I felt like this secret club was giving me the message loud and clear “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED HERE.” They meet on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month and the 3rd Thursday was getting closer. In exasperation, I messaged the area director of that club the day before the meeting to see if she could help me contact someone to get the zoom link and password to visit their club. I guess that’s what it took because very shortly, the VP PR contacted me as well as the President to provide the Zoom link and password. Honestly, though, it shouldn’t have taken that. But I admit I should have been more patient. Maybe someone would have contacted me eventually.
So that’s my rocky history with them, I entered the virtual room 15 minutes before start time with trepidation. Would they be angry at me for contacting the area director? Is this like tattling? Would they treat me badly? Steve and I sat in the waiting room for about 5 minutes. Would they leave us there? I began second guessing myself for my impatient actions. Ok, I admit I was probably catastrophizing as my husband would say. But that’s how I felt at the time. The good news is none of that “would they” happened. They did welcome us with a smile and were very friendly so us.
In conversation before the meeting started I found out they have had 2 other out of state visitors doing the whole 50 state tour as we were and West Virginia was their last stop too. It got me wondering if these other fellow travelers have had as much trouble as we have visiting some clubs. One telling thing the president said when talking about a Toastmaster visitor they had from Washington “I don’t know how he got to us.” I tend to agree, Mr President, I don’t either. You really have to jump through some hoops to get to your club.
I do give credit to Mountaineer Toastmasters for reaching Select Distinguished this year. They have 15 members and the members are really working the education program. They have 2 legacy awards and 7 Pathways educational awards. One thing that stood out though is they have had 15 new members join this year. This tells me there have been a lot of turnover.
They have two club coaches, Peggy and Donna, who began November of 2019. Donna was at the meeting we attended. Kudos to these coaches for helping this club become Select Distinguished this year.
At the beginning of the meeting, the president talked about Tim writing an article for the local newspaper promoting their club. The article talked about the awards of the members and becoming Select Distinguished. This promotion is what is missing in a lot of clubs. You have got to get the word out there. Toot your own horn. Celebrate your successes. (The president sent all of us a copy of the article in Chat.)
The members also discussed outreach techniques “boots on the ground” flyers across town and of course keeping up the Facebook page. I am glad they are discussing ways to let people know about their club and these are all good ideas, however, I as a visitor would like to give them some advice right now…make it easier to get to your online meeting. Answer your “contact us” on your website. Respond to requests on your Facebook page in a timely manner. If you can’t do it, get other people to do this. Most people would have given up coming to this club, I would think, unless they were on a mission like us.
Steve and I had some positive experiences at the club. Steve and I tied for first place in Table Topics and we also won the trivia contest about birds. I say the general “we” but of course, Steve was the one who actually answered the questions. One really good thing that Mountaineer does that I hope most clubs start doing is giving a best ribbon virtually. Since Steve and I won Best Table topics they uploaded a ribbon in chat for us. If we wanted, we could print it out and keep it. I think that is a really a good idea adapting to how we do our meetings now. Donna used the chat to tell Steve and me that we did a “great” job with our table topic answers. I like when people put messages of encouragement in chat for other people.
I applaud Mountaineers for embracing the theme of the day, Birds. Bird sounds, bird trivia and more facts about birds than I ever wanted to know were interspersed into the meeting. But now if I ever need to answer the question of “What is the state bird of West Virginia?’, I know the answer…Northern Cardinal.
Mountaineer Toastmasters has a lot of good things going for them. They were friendly and the president reintroduced us every time someone new logged on. We did feel welcome in the meeting. However, as mentioned above, they need to make their Zoom link more accessible. (ok now I am just beating a dead horse). Mountaineers also need to be respectful of other people’s time. Starting and ending the meeting on time is something I value. The meeting time was over but the President kept on rambling “about birds” so Steve and I had to go ahead and log off because Steve was now late for another meeting. I hate doing that but it had to be done.
All in all, it was worth the hassle of getting to the meeting. We discovered some new things, had some laughs and definitely another chance to rant about the inacessiblity of getting to online clubs -- my new pet peeve.
No comments:
Post a Comment