Toast(mastering), PHP and Bike Riding in Leipzig
Phew, quite a week! I started throwing myself into a few meetups in Leipzig and learnt a great many things about the event culture here (and other things) that I would like to share with you…
Toastmasters, Leipzig Chapter
I have never been to a Toastmasters event before, mainly because I’ve never been invited, but also because I had always assumed it wouldn’t quite suit me. Leipzig has two chapters, one German and one English, unsurprisingly I went to the English one and they were pleased to have a native speaker to lend a hand.
Toastmasters in an International organisation that through its network of clubs helps develop people’s presentation and public speaking skills. I’ve always been slightly suspicious of these ‘chapter’ type organisations, mainly because they’re quite American in style and that always rubs an Englishman the wrong way. But also because I’ve have often felt uncomfortable with bureaucracy and extraneous formality.
However as the evening progressed I started to realise the benefits of some of these formalities and started to like them. I have plenty of public speaking experience and whilst I’m not always great at it, I have the confidence to just do it without much thought. Not everyone does though and the enforced formalities about how proceedings should run, constructive feedback and a course structure (optional) help encourage and develop those who lack confidence to just plunge in the deep end.
I don’t know enough about how German associations are legally run, but it seems to me that Toastmasters chapters are run on very US/UK lines so it was also an interesting insight into the inner workings of an organisation.
Leipzig PHP User Group
One of my general observations about events here is how late they start, I wonder if that in Melbourne meet up groups where what people did between work and others things and that here they are people’s main event of the evening. So often an event wont start until 8/8:30 which is taking a slight adjustment for me.
The group was a little different from a group meet up in Melbourne, smaller (of course) but more casual. There were no formal talks but more of a casual discussion around PHP news and then the topic of the month, Project Management. Keeping up with the discussion was a lot of work for me, but I quite enjoyed it and people made me feel welcome.
BUND Harvest bike ride
The BUND is the German branch of Friends of the Earth and in Leipzig runs a lot of land protection programs. I went on a fairly epic bike ride with them around some of their sites which also had lots and lots of fruit (mainly Apple and Plum) trees. Even better, we were invited to take as much fruit as we liked from them. Interestingly, several of these cites were owned by the city so were public access for people to pick fruit to. Again I had a couple of interesting broken German discussions learning about the first day of school, Allotments (Small gardens) and much more.