05/10/05 Geospeakers Meeting Summary

Our President, Ann Gunderson, kicked off our first meeting in May by calling on the Galvanizer, someone she knows very well, namely, Ann Gunderson! Ann's quote told us of a very nerdy piece of software called "Teabuddy", which allows you to keep track of everyone's tea preferences in a workgroup. As you might expect, this is very popular in Britain! Switching back to her President's hat, Ann gave a very warm welcome to our two guests: Mary Caroline Meade-Mattly, who found us online, and Daniel Malmon, who saw one of our flyers posted around the USGS campus. We hope to see both of you again! Ann also led the applause for our newest member, Imelda White! She then dealt with two pieces of club business: a report from the Nominating Committee, whose work is in progress to find the new officers for next year, and reminding us of the upcoming District Conference, where we vote on which Area our club will be in.

Gary Curtis was the Toastmaster du jour; he introduced the theme of "Be Kind to Nerds" by telling us that he had gone online and taken a "Nerd Quiz", achieving a score of 96%. My notes are a bit sketchy here - I don't know if Gary was happy or upset that he hadn't gotten 100%! Gary then introduced Neil Shapiro, who stepped in as Master Evaluator. Neil introduced the Evaluation team: Carol Reiss as Timer, Chris Gutmacher as Ah Counter, Ann Gunderson (wearing yet another hat!) as Wordmaster/Grammarian, who introduced our words of the day: drip/dweeb and weariful, and finally Stephanie Ross, our evaluator, who gets extra kudos for explaining the speech evaluation form to our guests.

Mitch Smith gave the prepared speech today; in "Massacre Media" he started out by telling us of the bad (and somewhat undeserved) rap that horror movies get. Mitch then focused on "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and its sequel as prime examples, and did a great job of explaining portions of these movies in psychological and sociological terms, using lots of classical referernces along the way. Another very interesting speech, Mitch!

Our Table Topics Master, Lauri Kanerva led us in the impromptu speaking portion of the meeting. Lauri gave a very good introduction to Table Topics, including explaining the rules for the benefit of our guests. Lauri used lots of clever phrases ("nerd time's the charm") and humor as he framed questions that got us talking about the nerds around (and even within) all of us! Fran talked about nerdy husbands; Carol confessed that she was nerdy in high school (a baton twirler!); Imelda told us that she finds nerds interesting; Mitch gave us the classical example of a fictional nerd - Sherlock Holmes; Mary Caroline recently saw a very nerdy movie called "Napoleon Dynamite"; Gary, in true nerd-like fashion, told us that he had met his future wife as they were both on the way to a physical chemistry class. Results:

• Chris won both Most Interesting and Most Eloquent as she pondered the question of whether parenting is nerdy. You do have to study a lot, she told us, but your kids keep you grounded in reality. It is very important to have feet in both camps.
• Neil won Most Humorous as he told us of learning that the common phrase "10 items or less" is grammatically incorrect (it should be "10 items or fewer") and then, in true nerd fashion, proceeded to explain this, very loudly, to the manager of the next supermarket he came to.

It was time for the Evaluation portion of our meeting. Stephanie did a fine job evaluating Mitch's speech, listing several items Mitch did very well and some suggestions on how he could improve, paying special attention to several items Mitch particularly wanted her to watch for. We then heard from Carol, our timer, and Chris and Ann, who told us about our good and not so good uses of language during the meeting.

Ann reviewed our roles for our May 24th meeting, gave us the last word, and then rocked another successful meeting to a close.

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