Diana Vitan is a 32 year-old Romanian public speaker and the owner of Diana Vitan Consulting & Training, a company specializing in personal and business development programs. At the end of 2012, she became the first woman to win the Best Public Speaker Award in Romania, running against an all-men competition made up of experienced speakers.

Click here to view the first part of this interview.

Toonari Post (TP): How do male public speakers react to you?

Diana Vitan (DV): Men react the way anyone does: If they didn’t react, they wouldn’t be men, right? I’m just kidding. Actually, I wouldn’t divide this one up by sexes. There are people who know how to win by losing with grace and people who are willing to lose by winning dirty, it all depends on what you choose.

I chose to take the positive out of each experience and to enjoy each plus. I remember the movie ‘The Pursuit of Happyness‘ when Will Smith’s character told his son, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you what you can’t do. Not even me!”

The first four speakers designated by the online poll were all named public speaking champions, but I would have given this distinction to the entire top fifteen. They’re all strong names that have helped shape Romanian business development, and it’s an honor for me to be the lady in this extraordinary group. We’re all winners.

TP: Are you a trendsetter for Romanian women?

DV: Fortunately, there are many female public speakers in Romania, so I’m not. I may have more experience and I am unique because of the structure of my activity, because I’ve spoken in front of more than 50,000 people and I’ve worked with big names such as Paul Martinelli, Roddy Galbraith and Christian Simpson.

I also stand out by having founded one of the first personal development schools in Romania and by running a program called “Keep your head up!” the first one of its kind in the country. But I wish to support any woman who resonates with me and with my speaking style and, at the same time, I’d like to take part in events organized by other women public speakers in order to learn new things.

TP: Paul Martinelli, one of the most renowned public speakers in the world, became your coach. How did that happen?

DV: Yes, I am Paul’s only apprentice in Europe and I’m proud of it. Furthermore, after two years of apprenticeship, I am his teaching partner in Europe. It first happened when I started leading the personal development school that I mentioned. I teamed up with my colleagues, Milan Menghesi and Sorin Popa and we asked him to participate, and he said yes!

He saw me on the stage and told me he’d like to see me speak in front of a smaller group (20-30 people), speaking on a subject of his choice, which I did. And he told me I was part of the two percent of the native public speakers in the world. For me, this was a huge compliment and a yes after a huge amount of work. What followed was a period of two years of online collaboration five days a week, and me appearing on stage with him for the next six times he came to Romania, as well as working with him on his “Power Principles” in London where I met Roddy Galbraith and Christian Simpson.

TP: Was it easy to be taught by Mr. Martinelli?

DV: I am proud to have learned from a master of this caliber. Paul is an extraordinary friend and a tough teacher, as well as an exceptional motivator. During our “scrambling eggs” sessions, as he called his private coaching, I felt like giving up many times, but I realized it was just his way of making me become more driven. I am certain that no Romanian or European school could have given me the kind of intensity that his teachings gave me.

I learned to discover myself, to be a professional and to educate others. The success of my projects shows that his plan worked. My style, which was neither European nor Balkan, challenged him to “break me” and to teach a student who thought she knew it all, the most important lesson of all: to learn to forget, and then to learn again. After being a tough teacher, Paul has remained a good friend and a role model who is proud of my every accomplishment.

TP: What do you have in store for this year?

DV: For 2013 I have some surprises for the Romanian public! That is all I want to let you in on! Because the Romanian public deserves surprises and because we wouldn’t exist without them, without a public that takes us in, loves us and follows us!

Image Courtesy : Diana Vitan

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Diana Vitan is a 32 year-old Romanian public speaker and the owner of Diana Vitan Consulting & Training, a company specializing in personal and business development programs. At the end of 2012, she became the first woman to win the Best Public Speaker Award in Romania, running against an all-men competition made up of experienced speakers.

Although always on a tight schedule, she managed to squeeze in a little time to talk to Toonari Post about her experience and key moments in becoming Romania’s top public speaker.

Toonari Post (TP): How would you describe public speaking?

Diana Vitan (DV): Like any other aspect of life, I can really say that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The art of speaking in public is a general notion, which can translate either into a job, a necessity or a terrible fright – it mainly depends on who you ask. For me it has definitely been a passion turned into a job. I consider public speaking to be the art of delivering a message in the most beautiful, clean and appealing way.

TP: How is this profession evolving nowadays?

DV: In the 21st Century, the era of technology and speed, communication has new meaning, new form and new priorities. People feel more comfortable communicating through email, chatting or socializing online, so one might think that live interaction is more and more scarce.

However, for public speaking, this is actually a step forward. You see, my grandfather taught me that it is not the new that is to blame for the loss of the traditional, but the lack of imagination and persuasion in adapting the traditional to the new. I firmly believe that this century is the time for strong speeches, for concentrated communication, that combines the technical and the emotional in the most efficient way.

You have to be better, more concise and more connected in order to deliver the best message. The best people are those that keep reinventing themselves.

TP: Is there a difference between Europe and the U.S., regarding your area of expertise?

DV: Let me ask you a question in return: Have you noticed the difference between the Academy Awards and the Cannes Festival? The U.S., the land of motivation and positive messages vs. Europe, the Old Continent of theatrical art and artistic detail? Each style has its own pulse and, although I really do appreciate the elegance and reasoning of the European speech, I’ve nurtured myself with American motivational literature and American public speaking role-models.

Lately, I’ve rejoiced at seeing Europe make more and more room for the wave of personal development initiative, that needed to successfully complete the public speaking family – and this trend has swept Romania as well! Here, the transition from sales training, to business coaching, to life coaching, and finally to personal development has happened in a natural and beautiful way.

The Romanian audience is becoming more and more receptive to personal as well as business development through guidance (events, books, consultants) – and this has translated into a market demand and a success story at the same time.

TP: What does your audience look like?

DV: I get to talk in front of students, young entrepreneurs, corporate players, freelancers, people in need of personal and professional development – people who want more.

TP: More of what?

DV: More clear objectives, this before anything else! Because if you start with a wrong “why,” i.e. a wrong motivation, you end up setting wrong objectives that you can either not reach – and that’s when you become frustrated – or reach  only to find yourself dissatisfied and constantly searching for more.

TP: How do you work with your audience?

DV: You start to touch people’s lives the moment you help them discover two magical buttons: : “potential” and “passion” – this is where it all begins. I’ve noticed something strange: While people search for passion, they forget to live passionately. How can that be? Most people are searching for their area of genius, of excellence, for their way. Unhappy for not getting there soon enough, they become dissatisfied and frustrated.

When I ask them “What is your passion?” I can see it in the eyes of many that they’re confused and sometimes downright angry for not having found it – and I ask them this: “How can you discover your great passion if you’re not doing everything you do with great passion?” If you’re a telephone switch operator – be the best telephone switch operator in the world and you’re not going to be stuck there for much longer.

TP: You’re the first woman to win the Best Public Speaker Award in Romania!

DV: This is true! But this is also the first Romanian contest of its kind, organized at a national level within the Business Days circuit of events by Laszlo Pacso, the president of the Online Communication Solution Developers Association (ADESCO). There were more than one hundred Romanian speakers talking in front of more than one thousand participants in a two-day event that toured the major cities in the country.

The feedback from the public helped trim the number of the speakers to a top fifteen, and these top speeches were posted on YouTube, where a voting poll decided the winners. I came up on top after the online poll, but I don’t believe that it necessarily means I am the absolute best speaker. I have a lot of respect for all the other speakers, some of whom have a lot more experience than me.

The best speaker is the one that resonates with a specific audience and the one that adapts the fastest and in the best way. I intend to continuously work and improve myself for the people that choose the hear me.

Click here to read the second part of this interview.

Image Courtesy : Diana Vitan

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Brussels, Belgium - During a few days in mid-June, a delegation of over 50 crop protection industry and authority representatives together with farmers from various European countries gather in Sinaia, Romania, for a conference on the safe and sustainable use of pesticides.

Each year the conference is organized in one of the countries implementing ECPA’s European crop protection industry-initiated Safe Use Initiative (SUI) – a program designed to provide farmers and operators with an easy to use toolbox to successfully increase crop protection user safety. This year the conference has been organized by AIPROM (The Romanian Crop Protection Association) together with the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture.

Participants will have the opportunity to learn and exchange views and experiences on all aspects of applying plant protection products in a safe and sustainable way. The conference also includes a farm visit in the region, where participants will have the chance to see the practical implementation of the SUI principles.

“SUI has enjoyed continued success over the past years. “In Romania, the SUI training manual produced by the AIPROM was endorsed with the logo of the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture and University of Agronomy in Bucharest. This will increase SUI awareness and hopefully have an enormous impact on farmer’s uptake of the recommendations” said Yves Picquet, President of AIPROM.

In Slovakia, where the SUI program is also established, the Slovakian Crop Protection’s Association’s video- guide comprising of 16 clips[1] on how to properly use pesticides has been endorsed by the Slovakian Ministry of Agriculture and is now the official video-manual from application techniques to proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and disposal of the containers.

The SUI recommendations have not only been appreciated by European authorities. In France, during the 2012 International Exhibition of Agriculture, farmers awarded UIPP (The French Crop Protection Association) and partners for its risk awareness campaign ‘un tel outil de travail, ca se protege’. “This campaign highlights not only one of the key elements of basic Personal Protective Equipment, i.e. the need of gloves when handling crop protection products, but also risk management and prevention on farm. We are very proud to have received this award and of being positively recognized by the farming community” – commented Jean-Charles Bocquet, the Director General of UIPP.

“In the ten years that our network has been running the Safe Use Initiative project we have seen a great impact and uptake of the recommendations. Today we are running SUI it in 12[2] countries and the intention is to share the SUI principles with all Member States. Farmer and operator health is key, and the easy to apply measures of the SUI contribute to a vibrant sustainable agriculture sector” – Friedhelm Schmider, Director General of the European Crop Protection Association (ECPA) concluded.

Image Courtesy of   Herald Post

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According to a report put out by the European Central Bank on Wednesday, May 30, 2012, none of the eight countries that are waiting to join the euro currency are ready. Most countries in the group have only been waiting since 2004 or 2007 but Sweden has been waiting since 1995.

Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden are the eight countries that are members of the European Union but are not a part of the Eurozone – meaning they are not using the euro as their currency. Seventeen countries are currently using the euro, including Greece, although there have been discussions that it may have to leave the Eurozone. Currently the United Kingdom and Denmark are not using the euro either – instead they are using the pound sterling and krone respectively – but the decision to not use the euro was theirs, not the European Central Bank’s.

The United Kingdom opted out of the euro by negotiating an exception within the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. Joining the euro was heavily opposed by most of the United Kingdom, although its close neighbor, the Republic of Ireland, has adopted the euro. Denmark was able to opt out of the euro as one of the four conditions of the Edinburgh Agreement in 1992.

The European Central Bank must report on the progress of these eight countries every two years. So far it appears as if only Latvia will be able to join the euro currency by the next assessment in 2014. According to the bank, “in none of the eight countries examined, [is] the legal framework fully compatible with all requirements for the adoption of the euro.” They also claimed, “incompatibilities remain regarding central bank independence” in all of the countries.

Additionally Latvia and Lithuania are the only two countries of the eight currently taking part in the exchange rate mechanism II for more than two years which is required to be a part of the Eurozone.

Many of the countries’ economies are doing better than current eurozone countries. Seven of the eight countries – the exception being Hungary – have a debt-to-GDP ratio under 60% which is the Eurozone limit. Currently Greece’s ratio of debt-to-GDP is 165.3% and Italy, Ireland, and Portugal had ratios last year above 100%.

According to a statement from Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland earlier this May, Poland is still interested in joining the Eurozone even though the euro has been damaged by the current debt crisis.

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From the moment Romania officially entered the European Union in 2007, policies were defined, measures were taken and funds were allocated. But while the country awaits the result, the need to address further issues is starting to build.The European status subscribes to rights and responsibilities, but after four years, negotiations are still at a critical point.

Recently, three Romanian citizens living in Paris have felt that being Romanian does not always involve being European. On 9^th of September, three Romanian citizens, one of them a student at Sorbonne, were accused of theft on the grounds that one of their outfits bore a similarity with that of the real culprit.

The local police was alerted about the theft of a mobile phone by the victim in Paris, Pigalle. The description of the persons involved was a random match to two young Romanians who happened to be not far from the site of the theft, along with their friend – a female student at Sorbonne.

Without any other consideration, the three were taken to the police station. Not only were they arrested, but also treated with a complete lack of respect. The police were quoted for mockingly saying that there might be another Sorbonne for poor Romanian people and one even shouted at them: “Shut-up, I don’t like Romanians!”

Fortunately, the story had a happy ending with the intervention of the press but the only apology given by the judge was that “unfortunately other persons from your country steal phones and you suffered the consequences.” The three young Romanians have since decided to sue the French state, according to Hotnews.ro

The incident comes after the football match between France and Romania earlier this month. In the day of the match the TV show Les Guignols de l’Info presented in the form of satire several discriminating observations about Romanians. Examples ranged from “We know that the Romanian national sport is begging, not football” to “We have to pay attention to their game?

Why – is it tough? No, they have lice” or “I have a good joke – do you know how you say trashcan in Romanian? …Bucharest.” Another similar TV discussion took place last year in July, on the same channel France 2, where the humorist Jonathan Lambert showed the Romanian greeting as “S’il vous plait, Messieurs!” with a raising hand.

The whole studio repeated the gesture. Around the same time, France decided to expel all Roma people (n. gypsies) in France to Romania, giving them 300 Euros as incentive. Not to say that Romanians are necessarily different from the Romany community, but their similar sounding names does not have the same background.

However, Romanians or Roma, they are all Europeans and should have access to Europe on the same level as the rest of the Union.Moreover, discrimination and a lack of respect was proved by the lively journalist Nelson Monfort on France 2, when he added to the news about the French swimmer of Romanian origins, Roxana Maracineanu: “We should take care on this issue with Romanians.”

Being in Europe gives you the basic right of fair treatment under the law, without stereotypes and discrimination. The effort has to come from both side: West Europe and East Europe.

If we take a look at the low rate (8, 6%) of absorption of European funds in Romania, the disastrous sporting ground of the aforementioned football match or the large number of Roma people with Romanian citizenship begging on the streets, we should compare them to some of the negative sides of our fellow European nations.

Eventually, being poor in financial capital or simply historical good fortune should not determine whether you are less European than others — should it?

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Three hours outside Bucharest, Romanian National Road 7 slowly ascends up into the hills of the Transylvania Alps. There is a town of houses with chickens in the front yard and laundry drying on clotheslines. Welcome to Râmnicu Vâlcea, Romania.

In a middle of a field, shiny and expensive sedans are parked neatly behind glass walls. Next door is another luxury car dealership, showcasing a variety of high-end European automobiles. These cars are not only seen behind the glass, but along many streets of Râmnicu Vâlcea—top of the line BMWs, Audis and Mercedes. Sounds like all the citizens of this town have high-paying jobs. But think again.

Also known as “Hackerville,” Râmnicu Vâlcea only has one business: cybercrime, and business sure is thriving. The city of 120,000 is filled with online crooks, but only a small percentage of them are actual hackers. Most specialize in E-commerce scams and malware attacks on businesses.

According to authorities, these schemes have brought tens of thousands of dollars into the city over the past decade. The money contributes to development of new apartment buildings, nightclubs and shopping centers.

With only four local cops in Hackerville, it is near impossible to keep up with the cybercrime. Though they seem to be taking charge and following up on leads. One cop said that access to information is very limited: Weekday television consisted of two hours of state-run programming and only a half-hour of cartoons on Sunday.

No one understands how or why scamming began business but it was widespread by 2002. Cyber cafés offered cheap Internet access, and crooks started busying themselves by posting fake advertisments on eBay and other auction sites to lure victims into providing payments through wire transfers. Soon after, FBI agents in the U.S. and Bucharest started to get interested.

One of the first cases involved fake ads on cell phones and wire transfers for orders that would never ship. The men involved made a few hundred dollars from victims in the U.S. As business evolved, so did the different schemes. One early advance was establishing fake escrow services: Victims were asked to send payments to “trustworthy” third parties. The scammers also began to hire English speakers to target U.S. victims.

By 2005, Râmnicu Vâlcea was known world-wide as the place for online fraud, and buyers hesitated to send any money. The scammers adapted to this and arranged for the money to be sent to other European countries, only to be sent back to the city. As the FBI and other law enforcement find new ways to catch the crooks, the schemes become more complex.

Minus the illegal actions committed everyday, Râmnicu Vâlcea is a beautiful city. Defining the town center is a towering shopping mall that looks like a glass igloo. The streets are lined with different stores—leather accessories, Italian fashions, and luxury dealerships. There is new construction on every block, all fueled by cybercrime. The main attraction is the two dozen Western Union banks within a four-block area downtown.

Most of the crooks are Romanian, but that hasn’t stopped them from scamming all over the world. All they need are people who are good with computers, not afraid to break laws, and can easily manipulate their victims.

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