Being assistant of the SAA at a TM District conference in an experience. SAA assistants are the basic level of the bureaucracy, the foot soldiers. The mission is to follow instructions, to execute a duty. The mission is not questioning anything but performing orders. Chairs here, pens there, people in, people out, banners up, banners down… Hanging banners is a task that requires skill, because the material to hand was a tape with two sides adhesive. You have to separate the first protection film from the adhesive part. And it’s not easy! Nothing to do with Peter's plastic bags at the supermarket, much worse! I feel that the one who designed the plastic supermarket bags was the same who designed the two sides adhesive tape: do it in the most difficult way!
It was the District meeting in Barcelona on the Friday 19 November and Saturday 20th November 2010, with the Table Topic contest and the Humorous speech contest, and an experience from all points of view. People and people from all over “continental” Europe gathering together to share their love for communication, leadership and good company! An experience seeing how a perfect organization can make it run, with a very “professional” team. Professional means that nobody is paid for the task, and it is understood that volunteers are competent in their own field, and therefore can take care of any duty; and of course, the SAA’s team as the core force.
The task of one of the SAA’s team (myself) is to keep the door closed while the humorous speeches are taken place, and only permitting people go in and out of the room among speeches. It means three things:
1, to fight with those that arrive late after going to the toilette between speeches and are not aware that toilette time is longer than the in between contest speeches time
2, to share outside the room the time with those contestants that prefer to be outside and to see how contestants work the own pre-performance stress: breathing exercises, some relax, gym, facial expression, talking to all, big silence …
3, hearing people laughing inside the contest room with the speeches. The ones outside the room cannot laugh, because cannot understand what it is said, but can smile, they assume what happens inside is funny. And the outside contestants just suffering, because it always seems that people laugh much more with others’ jokes!
“Smiling” was the word of the day!
Till the next…
Alvaro http://blog.prestigiousspeakers.com
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