My Favorite Food Is Wine

What a blast weekend! From May 10 to 12 2013 more than 400 Toastmasters from all over Continental Europe came together in Antwerp, Belgium, to celebrate our 2013 Spring Conference of Toastmasters International’s District 59.

Like every time I learned SO SO SO much!

Apart from fantastic speeches and workshops we had the honor and pleasure to have Ed Tate with us – as a workshop leader and keynote speaker. The 2000 World Champion of Public Speaking shared many remarkable and memorable lines with us.

Here is a selection of personal favorites:

• Feel the fear and do it anyway.
• Invite people into your reliving room. – Craig Valentine
• The four thoughts of any audience: So what! Who cares? What’s in for me? It’s all about me!
• The bad first-two-minutes-combination: A nervous speaker meets a skeptical audience.
• The number one fear is not public speaking. The number one fear is public embarrassment.
• The number one goal of a speaker is: Make the message memorable.
• You are either remarkable or invisible. – Seth Godin
• Intellectually or emotionally – you don’t have to connect emotionally, unless you want to be remembered. – Patricia Fripp
• Stories are Velcro to a person’s mind. – Jack Canfield
• Four elements of a story: Head (think), Heart (connect), Humor (laugh), Heavy Hitting (learn)
• If you’re not funny, you don’t have to be… unless you want to get paid.
• The more ordinary an event, the better the story.
• Once upon a story…
• Stories are for the ear, narration is for reading.
• Always tell your stories in present tense.
• Not numbers are important, findings are.
• Start telling your stories in the middle.
• The confused mind never buys.
• We’re not here to stick our toes into the water; we’re here to make waves.
• To change your attitude either takes a split second or a lifetime.
• How do you measure darkness?
• Weaknesses don’t exist. You have varying degrees of strengths measured from zero.
• You cannot have less than none.
• Weaknesses? We’ve been sold a lie!
• It takes 80% more energy to change the water temperature from -1 to +1 degrees Celsius than it takes to change it from +1 to +3 degrees Celsius.

Ed Tate played a key role in our conference, but there were many, many more exciting people and phrases.

Like these ones:

• Content is overrated. – Peter Zinn (laughing)
• If you see me happy, you know I’m screwed. – Daniel M.
• Our time will be rewarded with the learning, even if it goes wrong. – Tobias Rodrigues
• Your attitude as a leader is more important than your skills. But skills are important to turn you into a great leader. – Me, inspired by Ed Tate’s keynote training
• Sales is like sex. Everyone says he’s good at it. – Jack Vincent
• Don’t ask, don’t get! – Jack Vincent
• Business questions are challenge-based questions. – Jack Vincent
• In conflict management you listen with your eyes. – Tobias Rodrigues

Finally, here is my absolute favorite line of the conference:

• My favorite food is wine. – Ginny Slocum

Public speaking is a mountain without a peak. But phrases and lines like those ones motivate us to keep moving uphill.

See you at the next District 59 Conference in Budapest this fall.