Another fellow and I have been promulgating a once a month series of talks for a few years now. It was started by yet another person about six years ago. We normally just arrange the meeting room and take care of the deli details and line up speakers and then do the master-of-ceremonies thing and sit down. In about three years, I’ve been the speaker three times, with a prepared presentation.
It’s fairly popular. Attendance ranges from 30-150, all professionals in our industry (bunch o’ geophysicists).
Monday my co-conspirator called to tell me we’ve got the usual conference room booked and nothing’s working out. All these people coming for what? So I told him I’d ad-lib a talk if he’d join me onstage.
Did you ever see the SNL with Chris Farley and whatsisname, the guy from Dirty Dancing, do a skit where they are both trying to be Chippendales Dancers? How 'bout that?
Open topic Q and A? Talk about recent research/trend? Take a controversial stand on a current hot topic? Start talking about some subject, then say, “But really, Bob here in the audience is the expert on it. Bob, why don’t you come up here and say a few words.”
You can have my boss for the day. He’s so happy to be the center of attention, he’ll keep talking even if he doesn’t have something to say.
There is a thread here in MPSIMS that discusses geologists’ (and, to a lesser extent, geophysicists’) work in locating the Afgani terrorists. Sounds like a facinationg topic to me and one that could be easily opened to a round table “what could we do if we really tried” discussion.
I’m neither a geologist nor a geophysicist, but I’d come listen to that!
Aw, c’mon, think about it…Black spandex tights, white collars’n cuffs, hard-thumpin, pulse-pounding, gyrate-your-ass-till-it-falls-off music, and igneouss rock formations, what could be better?