There were different tournaments, which gave out the motion “THB in independent Kosovo”. Kosovo is one of the rare cases, where you can test your debate plan in the reality and see, how it works.

Obviously, the most used arguments against independent Kosovo were that Russia and China, two SC Un members will never allow that. And obviously it was right. They are strongly opposing it, and I heard news that Russia is threatening to use some kind of violence. That will be interesting.

The second argument that was more or less always used was that the Serbian people will not allow that. And obviously, we have all seen the destroyed Embassies (and police running away from them) and again, the debaters were right.

“Kosovo is not a country that could work in the long run” was one of the other arguments. Well, obviously not, because the EU is sending hundreds of police officers, judges and other officials to Kosovo. Well maybe they just need some time to educate all the officials. We will see about that.

The most interesting thing will be the precedence. Most of the countries, that are important in the international community say, that this can not be precedence, used by other countries. Iā??m not really sure, how they will enforce that, but there are different regions, that have already said, that they will use Kosovo as precedence. We will see about that. Bosnia and Herzegovina will probably be a good test of the power of the international community, if they are really able to prevent that the Serbs in Bosnia connect to their ā??brothersā?? in Serbia.

Arguments for the independence are a bit more idealistic, so Iā??m not sure if they can be tested in the reality. The right for independence is not really what we can check now in Kosovo.

What are the arguments that you use?

Im preparing to run another Britihs parliamentary tournament, that is going to take place in two weeks from now, in my hometown, Maribor, a place, where new debate clubs are starting at a new University. Knowing that the tournament is not going to be that big, actually it is going to have only 3-4 rooms, I am concerned. In the past, I have always done the TAB manually, used the cards, and arranged rooms per hand. I would like to start using a software, that is going to take care of that, but is not going to brake down, if I have only a small amount of teams. This has happened to me before, on a high school debate tournament, where we use TRPC software, a great program to make the tab with it.

Im not sure, if using tabbie is going to work for me, because I know that it was designed for big tournaments like the WUDC, and it could have problems. And next to that I’m not able to choose if I would like to use power pair for the first one, two three rounds, and I believe I should not use it, because the rooms are going to be the same.

I’m not sure if Tournaman is going to go and work with such a tournament, I need to check that.

Does anyone of you have any experience running small tournaments? What did you use?

What I’m sorry for are all the people, that do not agree with the nationalistic movements in the country. People, that believe, that Kosova should be independent if they wish so, and people that now need to suffer because of all that is going on in the country.

I am writing this post, because I’m especially sorry for all the people, that should come to Slovenia as my guest, as guests of the Pro et contra institute. A month or so ago, me and my debatie, we took a group of 6 people to NiÅ„, a town in Serbia. We had a great time there, hanging out with people and doing workshops.

They should come to Slovenia on Friday, and to Ljubljana on Monday, but the did not get their Visas. Because of the riots, and the Slovenian Embassy in Belgrade being destroyed, they were not able to get their visas. That means, that they are not able to come to Slovenia. What I heard from them, they believe, that the going-ons in their country should not be happening, and are waiting for the peace in their country.

I’m sorry for all the people that were affected in that way because of the things that are going on in Belgrade and other cities, and I hope, that we won’t see any more violence. I have no problem with Serbians not agreeing with the things going on in Kosova, but, do not destroy and wound people because of that. That is not right.

I know this is not a directly debate related post, and if you mind it, sorry, but I just had to write this down.

I have added the motions from the “Amsterdam 2007″ tournament. I will also use them for prep for the Amsterdam 2008 that I will attend.

A couple of months ago, when I was making a class on public speaking as a guest professor on the Faculty for social sciences, one of the questions was, if I believe that the students should use PPT presentations.

My answer was, as usual, yes, BUT…

And theres a big BUT that I comes with all the PPT presentations that I have seen. They can be really use full, if you use them the right way. On the other hand they can really harm your presentation, because you will make all the people watch the slides and not listen to you.

Problem #1 is when you put just too much text on the slides. If you see yourself reading off the slides instead of speaking for the audience, then you know that you have done it wrong. What will happen is, that the audience will read the things from the slide, and they won’t listen to you. An believe me, they read faster than you can speak, so whatever great way you will use to read the text, it will just go pass them, because they will be reading, or they will be already finished with the reading, and will be bored, speak to each other etc.

Problem #2 is when you make the slides too fancy. I was just on a class made by a professor from a French University. He used a MAC and obviously MAC offers much more on the slides than the regular PPT that most of the people use. The problem with the fancy, moving, burning and god knows what slides, is that, you will have to wait while the fancy presentation finishes, and if this happens while you speak, the whole audience will watch the slides and won’t really listen to you.

Use the slides smart. You should not write whole sentences on the slide. Just use the bullets, and show the audience the main points. You need to speak about each point for some time before you go to the next point. Make them look good, but simple. With that the slides will be a great addition to your presentation, but won’t interrupt the audience.

Well, this month I had great problems going to the debate club that I coached. All the Monday’s, that I should have been there, I was abroad, traveling to all the debate tournaments and exchange, that we had with NiÅ„.

Luckily this next months are not going to be that packed with travel, so I will be able to coach the High school kids that come to my debate club.

We need to prepare for the Nationals, a debate tournament in March, where I would like them to go, for the first, and maybe even get a couple of wins there

I’m not sure if they will like to go to the International debate tournament, that we are hosting, because of the English language that is the debate language at the tournament, but it would be great, if they would go.

BTW, I see that a couple of people already subscribed to this blog via RSS, this is great, I love to see, that you are reading me. I will put up a short notice every time that I put up something on the website, so that you will know what is going on.

Some of you might have noticed, a week ago the server was down. Well, believe or not, I have killed the whole server, by just installing one simple script on this webpage. And it is running on Joomla, and the script should have been tested. SO not only my webpage, but all the pages, that are located on this server were down.

Luckily the guy, who is providing me the space, didn’t kill me, but he just jelled at me via E-mail. So, sorry guys, Im not sure if I will try to install all the RSS-ing again. Or not that soon again. Please come back and read all the good stuff on this webpage.

Debate is a young thing in Slovenia, my lil country. It is around for a couple of more then ten years, and the student debate is here even less, so there is ho history or precedences, what and how things should be done. And we have great problems on how to get decisions done, what to do if someone makes something wrong.

We have seen allegations over emails that were a bit too much, we have seen hours and hours of meetings, where we debated for hours and didn’t move from the point not even for a bit.

But after what I read on

http://globaldebateblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/fight-breaks-out-at-cambridge-union.html, that the Cambridge debaters fight in the debating chambers, I get really concerned what is going to happen in the debate meeting, that we will have in a couple of weeks (days).

I know that I just can’t expect that every debater is a great person, and sadly there were accidents in the past, where I have seen with my own eyes, that there are as much jack-asses in debate as in the rest of the world. But …. Anything else than violence is what I expect from any debater.

I have checked where do you click the most, and seeing that the WUDC motions are the most searched thing on my website, I have added some new, from the WUDC 2007 from British Columbia.

Also, I have added some final motions from this years WUDC.

Enjoy debating them!

Im having great problems with setting up all the RSS feeds for this website. I have no idea, why this is so problematic, but, I will work on it more.

But the first step is done, now you can subscribe to this blog at the top of this website. This is how you will be able to read all the info on this blog instantly.

You should use any RSS feed subscriber software, what I like and use is the google reader, a script that allows me to read all my subscriptions at once.

I will work more on all the other scripts, what my general idea is… I would like to enable you to subscribe to any of the categories of this website. That means, that you subscribe to the “Tournament invitations” and always when I publish new info there, you will read it instantly.

I will post more, when I enable all the RSS feeds.