JCI Dublin - Junior Chamber International Dublin

JCI Presenter Training

The training was a perfect illustration of the JCI "Be better!" and "Learn by doing" mottos. The fifteen participants gathered at the Greenhills hotel in Limerick on Saturday May 10th. They came from all over Ireland, plus a special guest from JCI Edinburgh. The trainers were Marcel Driessen and Marjolein Jongman from the Netherlands, as well as Helen Flatley from JCI Ireland.

It all started at 10am sharp, as we had a lot to cover. A bit of coffee, a bit of dutch fruit salad (Marcel's specialty for waking us up) and we were off. To really give us a flavour of what was coming, each one of the participants had to do a 1 minute presentation of the most memorable experience for them. From white water rafting to car racing to driving license exam to bra parading to solar eclipse to saving lives - it was spectacular to hear so many great stories, and one could immediately get in touch with the inner Presenter!

With such good vibes in the air, we moved on to listening about presentation types, audience analysis, the content of the presentation and delivering it effectively. Each module was followed by some sort of "do it yourself" activity. The best craic was during the spontaneous/impromptu presentation, where a limited number of participants were given a subject on which to talk for two full minutes, without any time to prepare. It was an unique opportunity to find out so many interesting things about the mating habits of a peruvian bug, the culture of Yemen or the technical intricacies of a radar device. Things that the presenters themselves didn't think they knew! I'll just say it was the best laugh I had in a while. Stand up comedy is for beginners! :D

The training went on until around 21:30, with a lunch break and several smaller tea/coffee breaks. After almost 12 hours we were all definitely tired - however it was amazing the level of energy you get from actually being immersed in the training, rather than being just a passive listener. The grand finale was a 3 minute individual presentation on a JCI topic, followed by feedback sessions from both the trainers and the other participants. I found this to be the best part of the training. The fact that you could get so many points of view other than your own on the way you performed "on stage" meant you could find out things about your presentation style which you did not really notice before -  a real help in improving!

Personally, I found the training to be a lot of fun, and extremely useful. And I'm pretty sure everybody else felt the same - otherwise it wouldn't have been that much fun, or that useful! It was all about the people, and the people were great. 

Tudor Borlea

JCI Dublin

May 2008 

The happy graduate Presenters