07/12/05 Geospeakers Meeting Summary

Our former President and current Education Vice President, Ann Gunderson rocked our 7/12/2005 meeting to order. Ann explained that normally new club officers are sworn in during the first meeting in July but that the "swearing-in master" from the district has not been selected yet.

Unanimous congratulations were also given to Shane for his recent wedding.

We had one guest, Alice Mansell, visit us for the first time and we hope to see her again soon.

Toastmaster for the day was Carol Reiss who introduced our topic for the day, "Participating in Opinion Surveys". Carol introduced Master Evaluator Gary, who in turn introduced the evaluation team: Fran was the timer and she also stepped in as Word Master Grammarian. Imelda was the Ah Counter and Ann stepped in to evaluate Shane's speech. Although Neil was unable to attend the meeting, he provided the word of the day, the galvanizing quote and the last word.

Shane Detweiler gave his ninth speech at Geospeakers. His speech, "One, but not the same" was speech project #10 from the C&L manual which has the goal of "Motivating your audience". Shane described his involvement with the One Campaign which seeks to convince the US government of allocate 1% of its expenditures to the goal of providing education, alleviating poverty and combating the AIDS epidemic in the poorest countries. Shane explained that the One campaign did not want our money but asked that we use our (eloquent) voices in support of the campaign's goals.

Lauri led our Table Topics session on Participating in Opinion Surveys and wondered why people are so willing to talk to strangers when they sometimes don't even know what they are talking about. In response to Lauri's questions we were enlightened with may perspectives and opinions as follows:

• Daniel described the striking similarities between a folk festival in Mongolia featuring wrestlers with skimpy studded attire and the Gay Pride parade in San Francisco.
• Mary Caroline asked if you were conducting a sanity survey, what would you ask?
• Fran questioned the authority, integrity and lack of responsibility of politicians in high office. I wonder what she thinks of Big Brother given that this email will become part of the national archives.
• Carol, when asked about geological surveys, said she marveled at the stories contained in rocks and geological records.
• Gary expressed his skepticism of opinion survey results because politicians sometimes attempt to manipulate public opinion at taxpayer expense.
• Alice observed that we are all social animals and need to interact with others. As a result, we will often do things like participate in surveys without thinking.
• Sharon convinced us that she would not want to be surveyed because she was too fearful of everybody. She later admitted she was bluffing.
• Shane admitted to always wanting to participate in an AC Nielson survey just so that he could skew the results.
• Imelda shared her thoughtful international perspective on how questions easily asked in this country simply would not be asked in Germany.

Shane was voted the Most Humorous, Daniel the Most Interesting and Imelda and Shane were Equally Eloquent.

Ann evaluated Shane's speech and found his it to be very successful at inspiring his audience to support the One Campaign. Fran gave the timers report and suggested that some of us who came in at substantially less than a minute should consider making things up like she does.

After the meeting Carol shared a DVD of her daughter Casie's excellent high school graduation speech based on the children's book, "I'll Love You Forever". Way to go Casie and Carol!

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