Page 14 - March 2021 Voices

FROM THE DESK

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Eldred Brown, DTM - Program Quality Director

Think back to where we were one year ago to online meetings? So much for that trip to Paris.
today. That shouldn’t be that hard to do, for it’s What have we accomplished as a District since

all too easy to remember when our world was then? Yes, we lost a lot of members, and a lot of
turned upside down. A pandemic of a novel and Clubs folded, but most of the Clubs that remained
highly contagious coronavirus had forced us into have learned how to master their chosen platform
lockdown mode. Sporting leagues were canceling for online meetings. We’re learning how to speak

competitions. (The NCAA’s March Madness online. Our Area and Division Directors are
tournaments had been canceled for the first time even mastering the technical tricks inherent
in decades, even as our Oregon Ducks were poised in running Area and Division speech contests
to win their first-ever national title in women’s online. Learning from the crash course PJ took

basketball thanks to a young Toastmaster named last year in how to organize an online conference,
Sabrina.) Restaurants were closing. People Lyle Schellenberg and your D7 conference team
everywhere were being told either to work from have been working from the start of the year to
home or that they no longer had jobs to work. plan an amazing online conference for you.

Stores had long run out of toilet paper. We even What was a perfect storm of rapid change
got the word from our International President last March has calmed down enough to allow
that all District events were to be conducted the changes to become our modus operandi.
online—yes, even our speech contests, and after I’m almost afraid of what we’re going to have

we had completed only the first of our Division to unlearn to return to our pre-COVID world.
contests. Many Toastmasters learned that they Then again, I don’t see us ever returning fully
had more to fear than just public speaking. to the way things were. Some of the changes
I can remember the many emergency we’ve made are going to stay with us for a long

meetings Emilie, PJ, and I had via Zoom, email, time—e.g., online/hybrid Club meetings, live
and text message as we on the Trio drove our streaming of conference and TLI events to those
District’s adaptation to our new online reality. unable to attend in person, our rich smorgasbord
How could we motivate our Clubs to embrace of webinar options, etc.

Zoom meetings? What would an online So, what does our future look like now?
conference look like? What could we do to stem Thanks to the record-shattering, quick response
the tide of members and eventually whole Clubs of our pharmaceutical companies, we now
leaving Toastmasters because they couldn’t adapt have three different vaccines being shot into

14 ONE COMMUNITY