SPEAKER_00 0:00

And they replied, no, only the pilots from warfare quarters are allowed to guarantee a uniform experience. And that made me rather furious. And so I brought kind of a long, long email or a very short dissertation on why I need to do it and why it's valuable to start modernizing our systems. And then they took about a month, but then they gave me authorization to run a pilot program on this.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Welcome to my Toastmasters World Tour podcast. Please join me as I travel virtually around the world and chat to Toastmasters from different countries and all walks of life. Let's explore. To chat to Oskar Negera. With eight years' experience working as a software developer in Germany, Oscar has applied these skills to develop an app to help with Toastmasters contests. Let's hear all about it.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Doing fine? Thank you for your invitation.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yes. Well, I was born in Ecuador and I studied physics, so I moved abroad to France to do my PhD there in solid state physics. And now I moved to I currently have been living in Germany for the last eight years as a software developer. And you're a Toastmaster? Yes, I joined Toastmasters about seven years ago, almost matching my move to Germany. What prompted you to join Toastmasters? On my first meeting, there was a woman making a very unusual project. She was holding a theatrical monologue, and I found that fascinating on top of the usual items of an agenda. And I thought, okay, if this is interesting and valuable for my life, and I need to do it. And that's when I joined.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

So we're just walking down the Strass and then happened to wander into a room and there was Toastmasters. You had no plan or reason to turn up into that room in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

No, I'm not that kind of person. I first checked on meetup um about events in my surrounding, and then I found this public speaking club, and I said, okay, I'll have a look. And then I was surprised what happens in those meetings.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

So I would say it's sounding to me like you're possibly my first guest that didn't have a really strong reason to join, other than it sounds like a spirit of adventure, almost a spirit of checking something out.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yes, I am a curious person by nature. I love that. I also didn't think I was a bad public speaker.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Because uh from my academic work, I was used to hold presentations. I mostly is presenting a poster when you are a young researcher, you go to a conference, and the only thing you get is a slot where you put your work in a poster, and then people come to you and you try to discuss. And it's a short conversation or a long conversation, whatever, but it's a small group of people. So in that eases you into speaking about your work and what you do to others, having to explain things on the spot, dealing with questions. And well, of course, there's always your the oral defense of your work.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

And what made you want to keep going?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

It's more the social feature that I get from Toastmasters. It's the feedback that it's a supporting environment where people are really wanting to see you get better. You develop a lot of self-confidence, which was unexpected for me, but uh I owe that to Toastmasters a lot. Just daring to do more things or daring to speak up your mind because you are at least sure you will be able to give a consistent and clear message out of what you say instead of bubbling around all the time.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Wonderful. Did you know many people in Germany have many friends in Germany before you went there?

SPEAKER_00 5:37

No, and I still don't have many friends here. It has been a hard uh place to make friends.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

So it's a ready-made social network, and at the same time you're getting a lot of personal growth out of it. Exactly. Do you think you would have joined if you'd stayed in Ecuador?

SPEAKER_00 5:56

I don't know. I don't even know if there are clubs over there.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

There is. I've got a friend in Ecuador, Bernardo. Yes, he's got the Ecuadorian club. How did you get into the software development?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Uh I always liked computers. My PhD work is in theoretical physics, and what I did is develop uh simulations. So I'm very used to programming computers for doing computation. Being curious by nature and someone that just looks for solutions is a very important skill, I would say. Um it is what has served me well in dealing with any problem I face.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Okay. Now I believe you've developed an app for ballot counting in Toastmasters contests. Let me just take you back a step before we talk about the app. I've judged at Toastmasters Contest, but I've never been part of the ballot counting. Have you been part of the ballot counting at a Toastmasters contest?

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yes. Many years ago I helped in probably it was a division contest as ballot counter.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

And what's involved in that exactly?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Well, you get a lot of paper slips and you have to figure out what the judge wrote. Um because the ballot uh gives you a ranking. The judge thinks, well, first place, second place, third place. Yep. And you have to transfer that to a tally sheet where you organize all the placings and then you add all the positions, and then you get a final score, which lets you pick the winners of the contest.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Okay. And how many judges are there usually?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Uh well, it depends on the size or level of the contest, but it's between five or at least five judges in club and area level, and then you keep adding judges. Uh I think you can get up to seven or nine easily, depending on the level.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Okay, and so let's say you had nine, and then they each have first, second, and third in their rankings. So then you've got 27 different places to tally. When did you first get the idea of thinking that an app would be useful for this process?

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Well, most of the time I have been a contestant. And currently in my area for financial reasons, for resources, we organize our area contest together with another area nearby so that we can book a venue together and we share our network to find volunteers to help us organize the event and be part of the judging team. Okay. And the thing is, every year Toastmasters has been growing. We have more people, and that has made the contest longer. Right. And last year, our area contest was just dreadfully long. It was annoying to be the entire day. And this year I was, or I'm still am the area contest, uh, IRA director, and part of my responsibilities is to organize the area contest. Okay. And I was facing this challenge that here in Germany we have six contests. We make the international speech, the evaluation um speech, and the table topics speech contest in English. So that's three, and then we do that again in German, but not six contests. Yeah. And because we're doing with another area, we are having 12 contests within day. Right. And that's what makes the event so long. Yeah. And also you have to account for participants. So I would say, well, we will have at least 12 contestants and a maximum of 66 contestants given the amount of um uh clubs we have in two areas combined. And I said, okay, assuming we have more members than last year's, we might have also more contestants. Last year's was too long. I need to figure a way out to make this thing a bit faster. And that's why I say, okay, I honestly can only optimize on the app or something that helps on the accounting. Because you cannot really shorten the speaking time. You can give the contest chair the instruction, well, try to keep it short, don't overextend too much. But that's it.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

So uh how long do you think that ballot counting normally takes in that scenario?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

The first contest that gets ballot counted, it's mostly done in five minutes. Okay. Plus, well, moving to the counting room and returning. Yeah. Um the main issue is that with every subsequent contest, your counting team gets tired. Right. And that is what's causing delays. That is what makes them uncertain. Oh, did I copy everything correctly? And then you have the other person which is already worn, it might be wrong, so they are putting more attention. Right. And you realize by the end contests, the last contest you are accounting, the whole process took you 18 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

18.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Well, now I see that starting to see the value. So how does the app work exactly?

SPEAKER_00 11:51

The initial idea was it gives you the judging form as a set of sliders. So it works on your phone, you just slide the score, uh, it adds for you, and it adds the contestant ranking, and it submits. And on the that is for the judge. On the other side, for the chief judge, he has some live monitoring so he can track which judge has submitted. So when has a ballot arrived to him, and when all ballots are half arrived, he just gets the result. That's the initial magic.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

That sounds fabulous. I must say I was a little don't take any offense, but I was uh slightly skeptical when I heard it was just ballot counting. I thought, how long does that take? But now that you've explained it, I totally see the value of that. And I love that. I love you know having it on your phone. What is the name of the app, Oscar?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Uh it's like um Toastmaster Contest Pilot. I mean it's it's not yet marketed. Um I introduced it as um as a pilot project to get some digital um use in within our contests.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

So you did it within your own contests? How did that go?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

So within my contest, I was very happy because our contest worked really like clockwork. We were on time, and as far as my experience goes, we are the first contest I ever experienced that is on time. Um it was fast, it worked, it had some hiccups still by the time it I used it on my contest. Uh-huh. But it it did save us a lot of time and it really felt uh like a professional event where everything worked within the schedule.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

So it's not available to Toastmasters elsewhere at this point in time?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Oh no. There's a whole bureaucracy behind. I mean, I had to ask permission from world headquarters to even try doing this.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Really? What was that process like?

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Well, it was rather simple. I first wrote to so first I didn't think I even needed permission. Sure. And I introduced during the club officer training to all my club officers that for the area contest I am thinking of making the judging digital. And then I had some paper lovers that say, oh no, digital, we don't know where it could break. So because you're not bringing a certified software, we wouldn't like to embrace your idea. And then someone told me, well, and then I refuted, well, but I'm running the contest, I'm running the responsibility, and I'm not essentially breaking any rules from the rule book. And then someone more experienced told me, Well, yeah, not because you're not breaking the rules, um, doesn't mean it is endorsed by Toastmasters International, which was the compromising way of avoiding a fight. Um and so I went to the rule book. There is an email there. It's called speechcontest at toastmasters.org. And I asked, look, I have this idea. Is it fine because I'm not breaking any rule? And they replied almost within a day, is like, no, only the pilots from warfare quarters are allowed to guarantee a uniform experience. And that made me rather furious, and so I brought kind of a long, long email or a very short dissertation on why I need to do it and why it's valuable to start modernizing our systems. And then they took about a month, but then they gave me authorization to run a pilot program on this.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

How long ago was that that you ran the pilot program?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

It went on over the months of February and March. Okay. On February, I was joining a few club contests and running the software in parallel. So I would go to a club contest and say, look, you already have the way of paper. Can I ask the judges some extra work to do it digitally? Then I joined the pilot counting team for the club contest, and we compared the results and monitor how did the app develop. And it was always papers records are still first, and the app just gets validated. And in March was my area contest, and then it was flipped. We are digital first, that's the system of records, and if anything fails, we back up to paper.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Yeah, and that sounds like you've got a plan B. So yeah. Yeah. And so have you been happy how it went in both situations?

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Yes, yes. I mean, um that's why you run a pilot. When I started doing in the club contest, you start discovering oh, there are some usability things that I didn't foresee that could go wrong, and they did go wrong. I mean, it's first try on a live contest, it actually failed. It didn't work as I intended. But that is how a process of developing software works. You face unknowns and it is what it is. It was fixed by my area contest. By my area contest, I had the certainty that it would work and it could be the main system of records, and it did.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

From an IT point of view, from a technical point of view, is it ready to go now? Or does it need further modification?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

It is ready to go when I do it, because I developed it for myself. But it doesn't have a complete um administrator interface. So I made it, I do the rights directly to the database. I said the event directly on the database. And I was planning after my area contest to give it to my to some volunteering division directors for their division contest in my district. But then I ran in some more bureaucracy, and some people said no, my authorization was only for my area contest and before and not for higher levels. And then Toastmasters didn't confirm if they did allow me to use it at district level. So it is untested on what it goes for, opening it up to other people, seeing how their administrator interface works, how someone that is not the developer of the app manages running the contest. That part is still to be tested. I see.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

And so where to from here, Oscar?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Well, right now it's still ask again information for next year for the next contest cycle. Now explicitly stating where can it be tested? And hopefully it's available in like one more year in the rule book for everybody. Oh yeah. It's a slow-moving organization. It's um you have to meet the deadlines, you have to convince people. Most of the problems are always among people, not technical. Technical is easy to solve.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

So you're having a fair bit of resistance from the powers that be. Do you have much support from the ground from the people in the clubs?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Main support is from some area directors. I mean, the the people that really feel the value are the contest organizer and above all the chief judge. Although the most praised feature, and just because there are more judges involved than a single chief judge, so it's just amount of people, is judges actually praise the fact that they have the names of the speaker on their phone. And I thought that was evident, but it is not. Most of the cases in most contests, all the speakers are on a flip chart in front, and judges have a hard time reading the name or catching it up. And and yeah. They were all just like, oh, I have all the names on the phone. That was for them the biggest use. That we dynamically just delivered them all the speech agenda, all the speakers in their order, with their name correctly written. And then the judging was for many of them not an issue to do it digitally. I learned along the way to offer many ways of inputting the judgers' ballot. So I have actually three views. One with the sliders, that was my original idea. I have a complete copy of the ballot, which is this table, and then just uh also a manual input where they just put the ranking. If they judge on paper, because they find paper bigger and more remote. Room they're doing on their phone, and then just transfer the final ranking. How many hours have you put into developing this app? I don't know. January, February, March, on weekends.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

You're meeting a fair bit of resistance. How motivated are you to keep fighting for it and to see it succeed and be implemented?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

I am very motivated. I think I already did the main work, which is not really the developing, it's the testing. It's the testing on the ground. How does it work? And I think once it's done, it should be for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

And how would you roll that out? Let's say you got all the approvals that you were seeking. How would that roll out? Would it just be available on like the App Store and Google Play? Or is there another way of rolling it out?

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Well, first uh it's not an app you install, it's actually a web page. So it's a link you open. Okay. You give every judge a very specific authentication link that authenticates them as a judge in front of the app. And well, there are hosting costs, so I don't believe in or need don't have the need of making any money out of it, but I will be giving some support and helping people and making things um work clear. So I I would say it's just the event organizer would pay a small fee to have an event set up, and then they get the support and they they organize their event and it works for them. There is no need to install, it's really a web page view open.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

And what about cybersecurity? I imagine if like I'm competing in a contest, it'd be great if I could sort of hack in and change all the judges' score to make me number one. Is that going to be hard or easy for me to do?

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Well, it's all standard practices. Securing a web app is not black art. Um of course, if you're a very skilled hacker, you will eventually get into the server and change things. Might be my best shot of winning a contest. I don't think so, you know. Um the app already authenticates um judges cryptographically. Um you have provenance of where each vote came. And you're actually opening up to something I also want to work on next year, and it's bringing some transparency to the judging. Like currently, judges are anonymous, and all is hidden, only the chief judge has the ballots at the end, and he and the ballot counters have seen it, and then everybody gets the result. And my idea is to do it like we do it in every fair competition. Like you see the Olympics, like the judges show to the entire public is like this is the score. Um so once you make it public, I mean you can you can say, well, yeah, the server was hacked, but we still have a transparent record of what happened. Yeah. Yeah. So that is my second fight, and that's why I still remain engaged. Once we do it digitally, it's also easier to share with everybody the public record of, well, these are the results, this is how we started, how they are computed, and you can check for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

To be the devil's advocate, you have someone who's not happy that they didn't win the contest, they're gonna then start following the judge out into the car park to debate the issue.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Oh, yes, of course. I mean, I uh that is a common problem also in other places. Um and the the way you track this down is first uh the judges uh might not be anonymous, but they are kind of protected, and you know contestants cannot get close to judges at least until the final score is announced and there are no more changes. Uh but I do see value going to the judge after the contest and asking, so why did you judge me like this? This is also something I want to fight for because if Toastmaster is a place where you develop yourself, and feedback is one of our main core values. The day you are performing in a contest, you get zero feedback. Yes. Oh yes, yes. No one can tell you anything there. Yes, that's all right. I hear you, yeah. I know I know. Yeah, going to the judge afterwards saying, like, why did you peek like that? And then you can get some feedback. It's like it's open. You didn't win, and I compared you against this other person, and they did this thing better than you. Like now you have a point to work on for next year. Yeah, it's there will always be like um violent people. I hope we don't have to engage on those problems.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Um beef up security because someone didn't win the humorous contest or something. That's true. Do you think you're gonna have much support for that? Because I imagine that's gonna be a bit divisive. There's gonna be some very traditional people that definitely would want to remain anonymous judges. And some people would think that's a fabulous idea because yeah, they get to learn as a contestant, they get to learn how they can improve from that.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Well, I think everybody is against change. We all like the way things are because we're used to them, not because they are good. Yes. Yeah. And I already experienced pushback just with a very technical solution, and I still have to face the pushback of getting it approved into the rule book. Yeah. Not as a mandatory thing, but as an option. I mean, I am all for alternatives and competition. I also wrote my report on this application as mostly requesting as a certification. Look, these are the problems I faced. If someone has a better idea, I'm happy they have an alternative product, and we should at least uh be sure we cover this problems I already faced. That's it. I think if I'm going to change how the judging is performed in the sense of, well, the judge is public, their votes are public, there will be some pushback. I think it is a better way. We'll see.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

I think that's great. I imagine some people will say, look, it's really hard organizing an area contest or a division contest. It's hard enough to get, you know, find enough people to fill the various roles, such as judging roles. And if some people are a bit timid and worried about being questioned about their judgment, is that going to put some people off and make it harder to find judges? So, in my view, I can imagine from the contestant's point of view, that would be a fabulous thing to get more feedback. From an organizer's point of view, is it going to cause that problem or is it not? I, you know, I don't know. I think that's sort of debatable. Personally, I think it's a fabulous idea. Both your ideas. And if you can get feedback, fabulous. We're all there to grow. I would support it personally.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Thank you. When you say, is it going to be hard to reach people? I don't know. I was, as area director, really surprised how hard it is to get to volunteer. I mean, I you you think you know everybody, and like the first hurdle is just getting people to read their emails. That's kind of hard. Um and then engage with you back, yeah, I want to be able, or this person in my club might be interested, because you cannot really contact everybody because data protection um regulations, so you have to go first the president and the VP education, and then they have to transfer your message to the club, and it takes them. What I can tell you is because the judges are anonymous, their work goes unrecognized or more than well, it goes recognized, but it's they are not personally thanked. At the end of a contest, you call all the volunteers on stage except the judges. You don't thank judges publicly because they were anonymous. And I think for some people, being thanked for their job might be more motivation than the shy part that would say, I wouldn't like to be known as judge. But you have to test it. I mean, you have to make a contest where you say, Well, the judges are public and their vote is public, and see if that makes it harder to find volunteers or not.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Yeah, I yeah, that's right. I mean, I think there's gonna be some people that are gonna love this, and some people are gonna be resistant. And I think it's great that you've put this out there, though. And I personally love it. Oscar, we're gonna have people listening in that are thinking, I love this. I think Oscar, what a champion. He's doing a great job doing that. Some people embrace change because that's how we improve, that's that's how the world moves forward. Is there anything that people listening in that might think along those lines, this is great, is there anything that we can do a bit of a call to action that they can do to support you in trying to get this approved?

SPEAKER_00 32:08

I would imagine it's writing to speechcontest at toastmasters.org requesting support for the initiative. I will share with you um my report. I mean, it is currently public knowledge. Um so people interested um can find it. And yeah, if if you're interested, uh help me run more pilots and have more testing places. Because I can only test with volunteers that are also willing to take the extra risk in our certainty that yeah, things might go wrong still. Um running the system in parallel still with paper. But the more people that embrace change and want to give it a try, the more tested and reliable it becomes for everybody else in the future.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

So if they want to write to support, what are they going to call the project?

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Oh, right now, how did I call that? I I think it's e-ballot for Postmaster Contest. Uh what's the title I give in the report? We use the same terminology that would help.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

E-ballot system for speech contests.

SPEAKER_02 33:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

That's how I called it. Very, very descriptive name.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Yes. Well, thanks so much for joining us today. That sounds amazing what you're developing there. Good on you for trying to improve the Toastmaster's experience. Thank you so much, Oscar. It's been a pleasure and an honour.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Thank you for your time and giving me the spotlight. Yes, okay. And help this gets forward.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Thanks for listening to today's show. One of the key elements of Toastmasters is evaluations. This is how we grow and improve, both by encouraging comments for things we've got right and points for improvement. We all learn and benefit from these evaluations, not just the person being evaluated. So any feedback in the comments is greatly appreciated. If you have a Toastmasters story you'd like to share, or would like to be on the show, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me at Toastbusters World Tour at gmail.com. Thanks for listening.