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Dr Martin Luther King once said, “I have a dream”. Well, so do I. In my dream, I envision our club sprouting into several more clubs to create an area with 4 or 5 clubs. I see this developing into a district with several areas. I picture speech competitions between clubs and areas that evolve top-rate speakers who can compete at the International level. I foresee an opportunity for Italian speech enthusiasts to stand before large and varied groups of like-minded toastmasters in many different venues around Italy willing to listen with a kind ear, evaluate with an astute mind and encourage with a generous heart. But alas, I thought this was only a dream… until Saturday April 17th, when I got a peek at our possible future and now… I am inspired.
Laura Tavola, Laura Limitone and I got up with the roosters that fateful Saturday morning and embarked on, what became for us, a thoroughly satisfying and motivating journey. We attended the Division E Annual Conference held in the Four Points by Sheraton in Zurich, Switzerland. This flawlessly organized event (what else would you expect from the Swiss) welcomed members from clubs from all over Switzerland to come together and learn from each other through workshops and speech competitions.
I was astounded by the sheer number of participants and encouraged by the enthusiasm, passion and keenness these Toastmasters displayed. When we arrived, we where warmly welcomed, briefed on the days activities and given our name tags. One by one, almost all in attendance approached us with a friendly smile, introduced themselves and expressed their appreciation that we would travel so far to be a part of their conference. I immediately felt at ease… welcome… home.
We witnessed top rate speakers give phenomenal speeches with textbook technique clearly honed through hours of practice. But, what really struck me was the joy that oozed from these speakers as they shared their thoughts through words and completely engaged the audience. We heard about the importance of allowing trust to win over fear, using anger as an ally, a new, positive way of looking at the word “Mafia”, how soup made a profound difference in someone’s life and the power of words, themes of some really great speeches that I hope we can share with all of you in an upcoming meeting once we receive the DVD.
After the speech competition, we had the opportunity to witness an equally articulate group judged on their skills in evaluating a speech. All contestants really showed how powerful an evaluation can be to encourage, give confidence, and empower a speaker to move forward and improve.
Following a short lunch and social networking, we all settled into the afternoon workshops. I attended the workshop by Jack Vincent about “Selling in a Brave new World” and AK Bullus on what to do when props go wrong in your presentations. Jack showed us how much more worthwhile it is to truly listen to our clients and not just show them how “sexy” our product/service can be and AK involved us all in coming up with solutions to real disasters that occur with props when we do a presentation. Both were very interesting, involved the audience and left me with many new ideas to think about.
We left the conference regretting only one thing… that we didn’t sign up for the dinner and perhaps stay the night so that we could have more time with these wonderful people. I made many new friends and established some great contacts for potential future business collaboration. We drove home exuding an after-glow of satisfaction after having a taste of what it means to be a part of such a large, well organized, enthusiastic, and passionate group.
As I come back to our club, I feel much more like a part of a much larger organism and am determined to use the tools Toastmasters International gives us to grow together with all of you, the Italian Toastmasters: a group that has already proven to be great and that, I am convinced, has the potential to take its place in the International arena to produce world-class speakers.
I highly encourage all of you to participate in the upcoming Fall conference (date to-be-announced). I know I’ll be there and am happy to have any and all of you join me. I promise you, you won’t come back the same.