We did almost great in 2015

It is amazing how much we can learn about behaviours and patterns when we know and have enough information. I am not an expert on data, but I pay attention to it, and I invest an effort to collect it. It is fun to do it as well. In order to leverage power of data, we need to collect it first. As an executive of Dawnbreakers since 2009, I have built a data information repository about the club thanks to some useful websites. When I joined Dawnbreakers in January 2009, there were no any websites associated with the club, so there was no data. At the end of every meeting, no information was saved and we didn’t know anything about our attendance, number of speeches, words of the day, meeting themes, and awards winners. Obviously some data was kept, to be passed to Toastmasters International, but only officers in charge (VP of Education, VP of Membership) possessed it.

And then, Easy-Speak came. Together with Wang Yip, I introduced and "pushed" Easy-Speak three years ago. It was really Wang who started it but it was me who started populating its database with retroactive meetings information. I was able to do it because I had audio recordings of the meetings since October 2012. It was a long process in which I spent lots of time listening the audio, and then transcribing it to Easy-Speak. The process became easier when we exclusively started to use Easy-Speak for our club management. Thanks to Blaine Zuk who as VP of Education pushed it in 2014, we utilize now Easy-Speak as our meeting/members/data management tool. It is a private application and only authorized users can leverage its data and functions.

Some of our data

As I enjoy working with data and I am curious, I am pleased to present some insights about Dawnbreakers 2015 year, and provide some comparisons with 2013 and 2014.

Meetings

Everything starts and ends with meetings. Without them, nothing would happen. So, there were 43 meetings in 2015. That is pretty close to previous two years, when we had 44 (in 2013) and 43 (in 2014) meetings. 

Do you know who was the most frequent participant?
People who attended more than 50% of meetings:

Congratulations to Peter Kossowan who only missed 3 meetings. And that is not all, Peter performed 37 roles during meetings he attended. And he was always the first one to show up and help setting the room up.

18 people (in the table above) attended more than half of all meetings.

Speeches

There were 113 speeches in 2015. For comparison, there were 117 speeches in 2013, and 99 speeches in 2014.
This is where we can improve. Basically we didn’t use opportunities to speak, as there were 16 speaking slots that were not used in 2015. If you are asking how I got to that number, it is a simple calculation: 43 meetings x 3 speeches = 129 speeches. Out of 129 possible speeches we had 113, so that means that 16 were not delivered.
This number is actually very close to the number in 2013 when we had 117 speeches during 44 meetings, and this resulted with 15 unused slots. In 2014 we were not that successful, as out of 129 slots we only used 99.
Below is the list of people who delivered the most speeches in 2015:

The most frequent speaker was Richard Coulter, who spoke 6 times out of 20 meetings.

Icebreakers

It is always special to witness an Icebreaker speech, and at Dawnbreakers we had that privilege more than less 14 times!
We always say that someone becomes a toastmaster only once they deliver their Icebreaker speech.

There were 3 icebreakers in March and 3 in June, 2 in January and February.
There were no icebreakers in May, September and December.
Also, there were 16 icebreakers in 2013 and 17 in 2014.
This also means that there have been 47 new people (who gave Icebreaker) in our club since, and that means we got lots of fresh blood and new ideas.

Being "ditched"

Yes, you can get ditched at Dawnbreakers. Many of us were ditched numerous times. We were ditched by our fellow members. We also ditched our colleagues. I did it too.
If you were a toastmaster at Dawnbreakers you know that feeling: It is 6:55 AM, and your Sgt. at Arms hasn’t arrived yet (well, thanks to Peter Kossowan, the room is already arranged). Chairman is also absent, and even more, 2 out of 3 evaluators are missing. So, you try quickly to assign these roles to others, and now folks will do multiple roles. Great! It was never that bad, as described above, but it did happen numerous times. People accept their roles, they say they are coming, and then they don’t show up. Obviously, in reality, in our world this happens - sometimes something happens that takes priority. Sometimes it is a bad traffic. Sometimes we miscalculate time, when time changes in spring or fall. Sometimes there is some emergency. But, there were some people who did it more than twice, or even more than three times.

There were 57 "ditchings" in 2015. 26 different people “ditched” us, and 23 people didn't. 1 person ditched us 6 times, 2 people 5 times, and 1 person 4 times. There were also 4 people who didn’t show up 3 times, and 5 people 2 times.

In the big picture all of this is good as well. It gave us opportunities to improvise and to come up with impromptu solutions.

Conclusion

It was a great year. We've been improving in all areas. You really see the strength of our club when you attend other club's meetings. It is important that we maintain this high bar and actually go higher with it.

Also, this is just the beginning of this “data journey”, as we only have 3 years of data. We’ll be getting more information as we go, and future reports will give us better idea about club success. It will also set us up for better and more leveraged meetings in the future. I also hope that someone else will recognize this and invest his/her time to continue collecting and analyzing data.

When I get bored of it.

Convincing Myself

The goal is to do it

I love running in winter. I even do the most of my running during winter months. And where I live, we get real winters, cold and long. Winters with a lot of snow but also winters with lots of sunshine and blue bird days.

Last winter I ran 15 times in November, 16 times in December, 15 times in January, 16 times in February, and 15 times in March. 77 times in total.

This winter so far I ran 10 times in November and 5 times in December. Well, I've been busy with mountain climbing for the last couple of months so I slowed down.

Running in winter is like a long game of convincing someone to do something that will hurt at first but it will definitely turn into something that feels great. But they don't know about the "pleasant" part. It is an exploration exercise, again connected with pain and pleasure. How cold is it outside? How much new snow did we get last night? How icy is it? How windy? Which hat should I wear? Which gloves should I wear? Do I need my shoes with spikes or my waterproof shoes?

There are so many parameters to a pleasant run.. But then, if I know everything, nothing is interesting anymore.

Therefore, many times I just get out of the house wearing only basics and I just go. I get exposed to elements. And that's beautiful.

Sometimes I change my route on the fly. If there was too much snow and my route is taking me uphill, especially if there is a long climb, I choose something easier. In the past I would plow my way through the deep snow but lately my hip flexors complain about it.

I also change my route if it gets too warm or when there is new snow during last seven days. Running on a little bit of new snow, on a warm day, when temparature is in range between -4 C and + 2 C is similar to running through quick sand. Two steps forward, one step back. Not even spikes help. I call it "suffering" (really, it is not, but it hurts, and I want less pain).

Cold world that is not cold, but just it is

When it is really cold in my world, and for me that is under -20 C, it is only hard before I get outside as I am procrastinating, and during first 10 minutes until I warm up. It is too hard to get out from warm house to this polar world. When I start running my face is cold as I never wear a face mask, and my eyes get wet. So I am struggling at the beginning. At the same time, when it is really cold there are no problems with sandy snow, cold wind - well, it is already too cold anyway - and the best part, there is nobody out there. The truth is that usually there is nobody out there anyway - but when it is - 25 C, then I could be on Mars and it would be same in terms of people.

During my winter runs I enjoy experiencing elements, cold, brisk air, falling snow, bright sunshine, cold wind - and also it is great to listen to my steps on the ice and snow, as I already mentioned. 

Crunchy sound produced by my feet's interaction with the ice and snow - so rhythmic and powerful, it gives me assurance about my own power.

By moving like this, using only my own power, I feel closer to beings that we were once before in the past. By being exposed to the elements, I feel again closer to our ancestors who were free of "progress", but rich with understanding and connection with nature.

Running during winter months makes me feel human again. It gives me assurance that the world is indeed beautiful, when not endangered by some humans. Running in the winter helps me understand myself and it makes me free and understood.

The World is NOT a Dangerous Place

"Let me be clear my friends, THE WORLD IS A DANGEROUS PLACE. Let me repeat it and be even clearer on it - THE WORLD IS INDEED A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE" These words were resonating in my head, all over again. I heard them in person, during the visit to a rally for the support of the greatest Canadian Prime Minister, on August 12th. Be afraid my friends, this world is dangerous. I am the only one who can save you and make you feel safe and secure. The Prime Minister was referring to, of course, to our global "world", plagued by problems that seemingly cannot be solved. This is how I intended to begin my speech at our first meeting of 2015/2016 season. I felt that I wanted to incorporate politics and awareness - I wasn't sure indeed that this combination could work. When I rehearsed, my only adviser said that she didn't understand the connection between the prime minister, this dangerous world and my story. So, I decided not to give this speech, but as it was already written, I am publishing it here. It might make some sense to some.

Introduction

(This is how I would start my speech): Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who know my name, and know what I support, it will be easy to relax and follow my story. For those who don’t know me, my name is BB, and I am a thinker, member of a minority, and a person who lives his life in his own way. If you expected me to speak about my favourite politician, our commander in chief, the economist genius, the strategist, our Prime Minister Stephen Harper, you were wrong. No Harper story today. This is a different story. I will tell you how I learned to see again, and how I woke up from a deep sleep. 
How I rejected to stay blind. How I regrew my sense of awareness.

During our climb - lots of fun

Unfortunately, there was no commander in chief, Mr. Harper, in the vicinity, to save me, to bring me to safety, to show me his leadership qualities. I am sure that all of you understand this as part of my satirical view of Canadian politics. Of course, the world didn’t want to hurt me intentionally, the world was just there, doing the only thing it could - IT WAS JUST THERE. Smart people will understand that I am indeed talking about our world outside human influence.
Story It was 8:30 PM on August 29th, and Stephane, my climbing partner, and I were stuck on a narrow ledge on the west face of West Baldy mountain. It was getting dark, it was getting cold, the wind was blowing out of this world, we didn’t have any water left, Stephane didn’t have his prescription glasses, I didn’t have the headlamp, we were running out of slings, we were running out of food, we were tired, we’ve been on the mountain since the early morning….we were lost. Nobody knew where we were, our SPOT device stopped emitting a signal, we didn’t have prusiks to try to climb back up, and we were running out of rope. West Baldy is not a big mountain. It is close to Calgary, just by highway 40, across Barrier Lake. You can see its mother peak, Mt.Baldy, when driving to Banff, just off the casino. It is in our backyard.

During our climb we practiced skills we needed

We were on a ledge and we didn’t know if 60 m of our rope would be sufficient for our next rappel. 

We almost run out of rope once, and had to improvise a mid cliff rappel. 

I can tell you the feeling that is produced when you can see that the end of rope is closer and closer, and that the rope might not be long enough…...
I guess Stephane could compare it to parachuting and knowing that the parachute is faulty. He was the one who rappelled first without knowing if the rope length would be sufficient. We could see our ascent ridge on the right hand side, as it seemed not that far away, but it was not possible to traverse it from our position. We had to try to go further down, and then possibly to climb up, to see if the drainage ridges would join somewhere at a higher elevation.

West Ridge is "Climber's Scramble"

We already rappelled four times, left rappel slings on the mountain, tried to get out of the drainage on the left and on the right, but each time we were denied it, as the walls were too big and the bottom was too deep. Our only option was to descend deeper into the canyon, hoping that we would find an escape route on either side. Or to climb back - but we knew that this option was not possible. All of our attempts ended with even higher walls on both sides and we had to continue down climbing.

Stephane ready to climb the crux

And after every rappel, there was the next one, longer than the previous one, and the canyon was getting deeper and steeper. We knew that there will be a moment when we won’t be able to rappel further down, as it it would become too deep and too steep. However, I always believed that we would find the path to safety if we find a spot to cross the ridge on the right hand side, as on that side, the West Baldy ridge that we climbed today, was protruding. I also knew that there was probably only one such a place on the whole mountain - as by going down, the drainage was becoming wider and steeper, and going up, it was almost vertical. I also knew that we didn’t have any choice than to find that passage. We climbed up some 20 meters, unroped, there was no time left for a “proper” climbing, we were running out of time, and somehow I felt that there must be something right above the vertical face, that Stephane tried to climb. He got up, finally after sliding numerous times, he yelled from above:”I don’t see a way from here, we’ll have to downclimb and try the side of the drainage”. I thought, “Where are you Stephen Harper? When are you coming to save us?” Poor Prime Minister - everything's his fault. Even on this ledge, on the west Baldy face, he was responsible for our troubles.

Rappelling to unknown

Let’s put joking aside - at this moment I knew that if we cannot continue to the right and up, it meant, that we would spend the night on the ledge, stuck on the west face of West Baldy. I yelled back:”Stephane, try to climb up and see what is behind, maybe there is an exit”. “I cannot even approach it”, Stephane replied. “I don’t think that there is a passage there”. I was still calm, but knew I had to push my good friend somehow, and convince him to get to the other side, and see with his own eyes if there was a lifeline for us.

Can you spot me in this picture?

“You must try it. You must go. That could be our chance”. I knew that he was thinking and analyzing. He always does. He replied that he would go, and that he would come back in 15 minutes. Next 15 minutes were long and lonely. I was stuck on the ledge, I wasn’t able to down climb, or to go up, it all depended on Stephane coming back - as he had the rope and the SPOT device, so he was the only one who could bring me up to the ridge. “The world was indeed a dangerous place”, I was repeating the words of our great Prime Minister. “How did I get here?” “What went wrong?”

• I was thinking and imagining that I was at home with Ada
• I was thinking about a coffee and Bruno’s omelette at Bruno’s.
• I was thinking about other mountains that Stephane and I did together, how we were experienced, how we knew what we were doing, majority of time :), and yet, we were walking on a very thin ice.
• I was thinking how stupid we were, to get stuck like this. I was disappointed.
• I wasn’t scared, I was completely aware of everything. I was calm and accepting.

The world indeed WAS NOT a dangerous place. It all made perfect sense. It was amazing how I got awaken from a sleep and could see again, on a such place. In such a precarious position. The world indeed WAS NOT a dangerous place. The mountain was doing only thing it knew, and that was TO BE. West Face didn’t want to injure us, to scare us, to kill us. West Face just WAS. The rock wasn’t wet and wasn’t choppy because it had some agenda against us. The rock just WAS.

Setting the last rappel

The elements, such as heavy rain, and hurricane wind didn’t even know we were there, mother nature was expressing itself, in only way it knew. The world indeed WAS NOT a dangerous place. It was us who endangered ourselves. It was us who made so many mistakes. Being still in one piece was a miracle. It didn't feel dramatic though. Everything was clear to me now. THE WORLD WAS NOT A DANGEROUS PLACE. Time was passing “faster” not because it did, but because we underestimated the mountain. We started late, at 10 AM, instead of 7 AM. We were not going to be rescued because we were too big to fail. It was us, we were dangerous to ourselves.

The picture doesn't do justice - West face that I called names :) after we were safe

I knew that so many things went wrong, and that the only people responsible for that were us. It was us, Stephane and I, who created this “dangerous world”. We were even somewhat prepared, had a rope, belay devices, slings…..but still we were too cocky and arrogant. There were at least 10 things we didn’t do properly. What do you think was the worst mistake? Some of them were rookie mistakes.

Lessons

1. We underestimated the mountain. “It is just there”. “We can do it in no time”. “It is not even 900 vertical meters”. The lesson learned here is: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE MOUNTAIN.
2. We didn’t research our descent route. We ignored the warnings written by other climbers that there was “no easy way down”. We even didn’t descent using preferred routes - we chose our own route. The lesson learned here is: RESEARCH DESCENT ROUTES AND DESCEND FOLLOWING A RECOMMENDED ROUTE.
3. We descended the West Face, and kept descending it, even though we didn’t know what was coming, what was below us. And we ended up on the cliffs. The lesson learned here is: DON’T DESCEND TO AN UNKNOWN AREA. 
4. Nobody knew where we were. We didn’t leave a detailed description of our ascent and descent routes to our better halves. We only told them that we’ll be climbing the West Ridge. Lesson learned: STICK WITH THE PLAN THAT IS COMMUNICATED TO SOMEONE (ANYONE) WHO COULD LET RESCUE PARTIES KNOW WHERE TO SEARCH. LET PEOPLE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING AND TELL THEM WHEN YOU"LL BE BACK.
5. “Minor” lessons (6-12): 
6. (Always) Carry a “normal” prescription glasses. Stephane only had a dark, sun glasses that are prescription glasses at the same time. When it got dark he couldn’t see well anymore, and that was an issue..
7. (Always) Carry the maximum amount of water (in camel water-pack) if going to dry, waterless area. We ran out of water - we only had 2 deciliters of Powerade...
8. Research water sources on the mountain before you climb it, especially if the mountain is the dry one.
9. (Always) Carry extra tapes and webbings if rock climbing (descending).
10. (Always) Carry an extra food.
11. (Always) Carry a headlamp.
12. DO NOT separate when not able to see each other, especially if one of us has a lifeline(s)

Stephane got back after 10 minutes. “I think we can make it”, he yelled. "There is a steep bridge on the other side that we can walk on, and then we can rappel to the bottom and walk to the ascent ridge”.

Our descent route is in red colour.

We were at the car 1.5 hrs later. We were enveloped into darkness. The wind wasn’t blowing that hard, and the sky was clear. There was no smoke anymore. We were safe.

Let me be clear my Friends, The world is not a dangerous place, it is us, humans who are dangerous. To Ourselves and to the World.