Its all packed and Im only waiting for my debatie to come and pick me up. 12-13 hours in the car and we will be in the most liberal town in Europe.

I will try to post something about the tournament from Netherlands, of course expect to see the motions, results and if possible regular updates on what is going on.

Wish me free highways, no police or speed traps and good coffey on the way.

I have believed in the past, that debate is a bit isloated “sport” and that if you use arguments and styles that we use in debate, that you will not be as greatly apreciated in general life. Don’t get me wrong, I TRULY believe that debating will help you in your life, and luckily I got another piece of evidence to support that.

Let me tell you where. There’s a TV show on the Slovenian national TV called the pyramid (piramida). It should be an argumentative discussion, because the show features three publi figures (mostly known people, pop stars and simmmilar) that get to speak about important topics. Each person gets a minute to present his/her oppinion on a given topic and they can interupt the other speaker while her/she speaks with a 30 seconds speach/reply. During the whole show people that watch the show can send sms-es or call to vote for the person that they believe makes most sense.

One of the Korea Worlds team debater was invited to the show just yesterday (his name is Filip DobraniÄ? and he recieved the award for the best speaker in EFL (english as a foreign language) at the Korea world schools. I took a couple of my Serbian guests to see the show, so I got to see it live.

Filip won the show, so he is advancing to the semi finals. And I must say that I was a bit surprised, not because I would not believe that Filip could do it (heck he won a couple of debates agains me, or probably all of them) but I was sure that the other two guests (one semi popular singer and one theatre and TV actress) will use more populistic arguments (and they did) and that people will like them more. I have seen parts of previous episodes of this show, and people that used most populistic arguments usually won the contest.

Filip did a good job, and it the difference between him and the others was very obvious, he did show, that it is not his first time that he does public speaking.

It is nice to have a comparisign between debaters and non-debaters in such a show, where you see them side to side and you can see, that we are doing something good when we teach people how to debate.

Well I know I did. And I know a lot of other debaters that did the same. Probably the easiest way to do it is to pay in cash, but because the organisers have no idea if you are going to show up or not, if you do not pay in advance, I can believe them that a lot of them just like to see the money up front.

Wire transfer has problems with all the information that you need to provide to the bank to make a transfer. As far as I’ve seen it, the regulations are not the same in all the countries, that means that some banks need more info and some need less. Sometimes all that you need is an account number, SWIFT and IBAN code and you are good. And if you are unlucky, then you will need to provide street number and adress and other stuff.

Credit cards are fast and simple, but a lot of people just do not have a credit cards. Or we have a small limit on them (at least I do) so we are not able to use them to pay participation.

I really need to congratulate the guys that organise Amsterdam 2008, becuase they started a Paypal account and now you are able to pay with Paypal. Paypal is an internet paying service, that I use for other payments on the internet and it is really great. If your limit on the CC is to small, you just upload the money and wait and upload it to Paypal again, and you are good. It is safe and transperent.

Maybe the EUDC organisers for 2009 and other tournaments should think about it. Would you use it?

I have written about the International debate academy Slovenia before, and if you do not believe me, that this is the best way to learn how to debate, well that means that you must be one of the people that need to see by them selves. Well now you are able to do that. If you go to the Debate video section of this website, you will be able to watch a couple of hours of great lectures by Neil Harvey Smith (I’ve just added two more), Steve Ilano or G. Rhydian Morgan.

Check it out, see by yourself and apply to IDAS in november.

Well, I never was a little boy, even when I was little… but never mind, this is not important…

Tuna used his website blog to promote this site, and I really thank him for that. If you clik on the previous link, you will see a very old picture of me.

What is important about this one is that this is a record of the first days of my debating career. Literaly, this is a photo from my first International Debate academy (and it was the first one, and Im proud to be able to say, that I attended all of them), when I started to discover the world of debate.

It was much easier at that time and it was much more fun I must say.

On the other hand, I have no idea where would I be if I would never enter that building. Most of my friends are debaters, I know people from all around the world because of debate, my girlfriend is a debater and I got to know her just because of it. I work debate, I work because of debaters.

It is a way of life and a drug, and it does all the great stuff.

This blog entry is just a confession, a small thinking, what did debate do to my life. I hope that debate has done and will do a lot of great stuff to you and that it will improve your life as it did mine. Or if not debate, there should be something that will do this to your life. Its much more fun.

Thanks Tuna, you were one of the people that inspired me at the time and are still doing it, and there are many others, and you probably know who you are (B., A., S., J., H., S., G., B., S., M., and all others…)

I’ve uploaded some pictures from the “Thinking and speaking a better world” conference that you can view here:

Click

This was one of the weekends, when you work during the day and party during the night, and still love to do it.

The conference was a great success of the Pro et contra, World debate institute, and the board for education at the ministry of education (or simmilar)…

I haven’t really seen a lot of papers because I had to do the organising things, but from what I heard, there are great things going on in debate around the world. And there are great things to come…

Kate Schuster had a great key-note speach on how to do debate education, and what is good and what is bad and all the things around. I heard a lot about here even before I met her, and I must say she is a great woman, and an unbelivable debate trainer, and I wish Ill be like her sometimes

There were other great papers on the conference, and some of them were even recorded. After I get some sleep, I will post them ASAP, and some will be posted by Tuna, and I will post links here as soon as the videos are posted.

Just wanted to say thanks to all the people that attended the conference, and for those that didn’t, its your loos.

Thanks to the org.com, girls your great.

I should be sleeping by now….

Tomorow is a big day, the 2nd International conference starts.

The preparations have started a long time ago, and I must say that Bojana (Director of the Za in proti) and Tuna (Director of WDI) made a great job.

We are going to have almost 100 participants, papers on all the aspects of debate, argumentation and simmilar.

All the welcome packages are prepared, we need to do some smaller things tomorow and at 12.00 we will open the registration.

I hope all works well and that everyone will be happy when we finish tomorow. The conference will last until sunday, so there are three days of hard work in front of us, but because all the people I will work with and meet in the next days are really nice, I know that the work will actually be just fun.

I look forward to see many friends that I do not see often enough.

If you would like to read more about the conference, come back, or RSS to this blog, I will post more about it when it starts and until it finishes.

We are going to make a lot of recordings (us and Tuna) and we will post the videos as soon as possible, so that all of you that are not able to join us here in Slovenia will be able to see at least a part of all the papers that will be presented on the conference.

I have to finalise my presentation also….

Debate programs in different countries vary from “none” to “all in”, meaning, that a lot of countries have small debate programs or none, and there are countries where debate did get a long way.

I’m really busy doing all the debate stuff right now so it got me thinking how far did debate come in Slovenia…

Just now we are organisin a debate conference that is supported by our country’s president, Ljubljanas mayor and the dean from the faculty… You can see debate on the national TV, and debaters have been invited to most of the important TV shows.

Debate tournaments are covered by local and national media. The High school nationals was covered by the national radio.

When I go and make debate and public speaking seminars around the country on High schools, a lot of pupils already know, what debate is about, especially because of the TV debate show (called Tekma).

Debate seminars for teachers in High schools are payed and promoted by the National education board (this is probably the worst translation ever… ).

I believe that debate made a great and a long journey in Slovenia… The last 11 years have been exciting, and Im glad I was able to participate in a couple of them… And I hope I will be able to participate some more…

So what is the road that you have traveled?