international travel adventures part 9 – action packed

Busy day today… JCI Morning Show 9-10am, Creative Young Entrepreneur Award (CYEA) presentations 10:30am-12pm, delegates luncheon 12-1pm, seminar training 2pm-6pm, Award Ceremony 7-9pm, and Dutch Night 9pm-onwards.

The theme of today’s morning show was “Impact the Future.” The morning show featured a speaker (and JCI trainer), Per Stilling.

Per Stilling is a JCI Senator and has been an active JCI member since 1998.  Working within the training field for over 10 years, Per focuses on increasing the output of individuals, groups, and companies.  He has trained several thousand employees on four continents and 27 countries.  He currently serves as a partner of Momentum, a company specializing in training programs. Per holds an MS in Business from Oregon State University, USA, and an MBA from ESCP-EAP in Paris.

Per is also my favourite person from Norway – and someone I went head to head with in World Debating yesterday!  Excellent morning show (as per the usual) – and the last one of the week! At the morning show, I purchased one of the shirts JCI was selling (with proceeds being donated to the UN’s Nothing But Nets campaign – so cute and soooo me!).

Official JCI Nothing But Nets Shirt!

From the Morning Show I headed to the Creative Young Entrepreneur Award (CYEA) presentations. CYEA works similar to TOYP (as discussed in last post) and nations nominate who they think meets the criteria listed – no requirement to be a JCI member, just top entrepreneurs in their country etc etc.  The awards committee then selects the top 3 to attend Worlds.  The 2010 nominees are: Ricky Wong from Malaysia, Jo Neilsen from Belgium, and Bradley Smith from Australia.

I watched the three presentations, and (in my opinion) Brad did an absolute fantastic job.  The results… will be announced tonight at the Awards Ceremony!

 

2010 CYEA Nominees & Judges

From CYEA I headed for a quick bite before off to the tradeshow and then to Patrick Knight’s seminar “How to Turn an Idea into Reality”.  Patrick’s seminar description:

Learn to create your own opportunities for your career, in JCI, and in life.  Luck doesn’t put you in the right place at the right time.  You need to look for openings, create opportunities, and be ready to capitalize on them.  In this course, you will learn to spot divine connections that can help you achieve your goals. You will learn the secrets of proactive promotion, out-of-network analysis of ideas and positive decision making.  Don’t be lucky, be better!

 

Exercise at "Turning an Idea into a Reality"

It was a great session with lots of ideas generated on how to improve the future.  Marta and I made a quick dash out of training to head back to my hotel and do an outfit change before the Awards Ceremony.  Fingers were crossed because JCI Canada was in line for World Debating Champions in both English and French.

We made it back to the Awards Ceremony just in time, and got seated with the rest of the Canadian delegates.  One by one, amazing people were selected for local, national, and international awards.  Unfortunately Brad from Australia did not win CYEA; instead Jo from Belgium won.

And then… World Debating Championships were announced for French speaking… all fingers were crossed and WE WON!

 

FRENCH CANADIAN TEAM WINS WORLD DEBATING CHAMPIONSHIPS!

 

And then…the results were announced for English speaking… and WE WON!

ENGLISH CANADIAN TEAM WINS WORLD DEBATING CHAMPIONSHIPS!

Weeeeeee! So delighted!  Since I had won an international award at last years World Congress in Tunisia, Africa, all of my JCI friends were hoping that I could secure another one next year.  Maybe next year we’ll get the flag in the right direction! ;) The hope is that I will now go to JCI World Congress 2011 in Brussels, Belgium to defend my title.

From the Awards Ceremony, I made a quick change in the bathroom with Marta, and we were off to celebrate at Dutch Night! JCI Netherlands and Belgium were hosting an event at Osaka’s Creative Centre – dancing and fun to be had with all delegates.

A few pics from Dutch Night:

 

Patrick from JCI Quebec and I at Dutch Night

 

Someone left their bunny ears in the bathroom. :(

 

 

Dutch Night. :D

 

From Dutch Night, Wanye, Asma, Ismail, and I went to Karaoke in Shinsaibashi…. till 6:30am. No pictures needed, but their is video evidence. :)

international travel adventures part 8 – world debating

So this morning came early… real early…

I had talked to Erik last night at the Global Village re: World Debating this morning and we planned to meet up at 8:30am this morning to go over all that he missed this far (ie. point structure, JCI debating expecations, etc).  Well I dragged myself over to the conference centre nice and early – and he no showed.  So disappointing… sent a few panicked texts, hoping that he would show up before World Debating started at 10:30am.  I headed over to the JCI Morning Show… fun times. It’s kinda like Regis & Kelly, but without the celebrities, and instead internationally renowned business people.  Patrick Knight from JCI USA hosts the Morning Show, and today the speaker was Wayne Clark.

Wayne Clark is an economics graduate who has spent 12 years building his career as an internal communications and employee engagement practitioner.  He has worked extensively internationally in the design and delivery of complex people engagement programmes for global organizations. He is the Managing Partner of the Best Companies Partnership who help to produce the Sunday Times “Best Companies To Work For” lists.

The Morning Show is always entertaining – lots of laughs and a dance party, BUT guess what? It was actually my first time attending!!  After Wayne spoke, an Ambassador from the UN Foundation spoke to Nothing But Nets and all the money JCI had raised to end malaria in Africa!

JCI Japan raised the most amount of money for Nothing But Nets!

JCI Japan was presented with an award for raising the most amount of money for Nothing But Nets! I rushed from the Morning Show to World Debating Championships to meet our missing debater, Erik.  No luck on that front he never showed up and I had to find a replacement debater at the last minute.  Thank you Hassan from JCI Calgary.  English Debating was supposed to run from 10:30am to 5pm and French Debating from 2pm to 5pm (we had a French team entered too – from JCI Quebec!).

So I was quite concerned at 10:30am… well we had Hassan, the newest member to enter the team – who was absolutely not up to speed on JCI Debating and it was time to get started! Well thank you Miss Jillian Walker, because when we drew #’s to see who would go first, I picked #7, which meant… Team Canada gets a “bye”!  Odd number of teams meant we got to skip the first round and head straight into semi-finals.

The bad: we don’t get to practice our debating skills.  The good: we get to fluff our way through the morning and hope for the best!  JCI Netherlands went against JCI Hong Kong – and newbie debater Winnie Leung from Hong Kong showed them who was boss! Then JCI Norway went against JCI Turkey – and JCI Norway reigned as the best.  JCI UK had a unfortunate morning when one of their teams didn’t show, so they were down to 1 and went head-to-head with JCI Australia.  A fairly even battle, but JCI Australia won.

Semi-Finals went as follows:

2010 World Debating Championships - English Teams

In Canada’s first debate against Australia the topic was “a farmer loves his tractor more than he loves his wife” and we had to argue AGAINST.  The only way to sum up this debate was BRUTAL, BRUTAL, BRUTAL.  The topic was brutal. Our argument was brutal. Everything was brutal. I admitted defeat in the middle of the debate, knowing that we did a poor job.

As soon as it was over, Per from JCI Norway came over and gave us some feedback on how to debate better next time.  The scoring came back and Australia 801, Canada EIGHT HUNDRED SEVENTEEN. What the?  Some how… from a scoring perspective, we did better than JCI Australia – Woohooooo!!!

Who were we to go up against next? ;) JCI Norway (and all that helpful information they just gave us)!  The topic: “media is concerned only with the truth” and we were again AGAINST.  The topic was strong, the argument was strong, and Team Canada was ready to kick some Norway…!!  We had a room full of delegates cheering Canada on and everyone was very impressed with my 2 minute closing statement! [Results are announced at the Awards Ceremony on Saturday night].

Team Canada vs. Team Norway

It was a very long day, with English debating lasting over 8 hours.  It was back to the room for a quick change then off to JCI Japan Night at the Kyocera Dome.  JCI Japan Night was comprised of various local Japan chapters setting up booths, offering an opportunity to learn about each city/chapter/etc.  By the time I got there, most of the festivities were ending and I met up with Marta who wanted to head into Shinsaibashi for karaoke – this girl, was exhausted. I skipped out – giving attention to my headache instead of my singing lessons. :)

Me at JCI Japan Night after playing golf to win a Happi Jacket!

JCI Japan Night!