Re: Question to those who hire WW speakers or do speaking

patriarch Our club seems to enjoy having speakers chosen from amongst the

alumni of the various woodworking and design programs in our region. > College of the Redwoods, San Diego State (or maybe USCD), Calif > College of the Arts, and the like. We also seem to get once or twice > a year an author from Taunton or Stirling, with an interesting book > to talk about.

Do you know much about the choosing process? We've hired a few big names in the past who turned out to be only slightly more interesting than drying paint. Conversely, we've hired amateurs who were extremely interesting and informative.

Are you looking for someone to fill 90 minutes? Or ten class days? > Local or 'imported'? Big name, or hands on? Technique, tools, > design or marketing? Who's the audience, and why are they there? > Who pays the tab? > > All that, and more, makes a difference.
60-90 minutes, sometimes with 1 or 2 eight hour workshops for a woodworking club
As good as Kelly Mehler is > with a table saw, after reading his book, and listening to him for 45 > minutes, I'm ready for some new material. And he likely has new > material to teach. But in a trade show setting, I'm not going to > hear it.

We recently hired a highly recommended expert who came and announced that he couldn't cover any part of the subject in a short time span and so spent the time essentially doing an infomercial for his school. I was pissed, he should have refused the offer if he couldn't introduce the subject. No one expects much in such a short time span, but I do expect them to at least introduce the subject. That's why I was wondering if people check references, it's something I want to do but some others feel that would be inappropriate.

Reply to
Pee Pee Phirephighter
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Lon Schleining has done a good job for us. Roy Underhill is comming this month, but he's local.

Reply to
Wilson

Pee Pee Phirephighter wrote in news:Xns95645F0EE7C7Dppphirephighterorg@24.25.9.42:

Our club is

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We have a fellow in charge of speaker selection, but his name escapes me right now. Ping me on the easily unmunged email address, and I'll see if I can get the contacts for you.

We're a large club, and our members go lots of places. Generally, someone knows or has met the folks we have in to speak.

For our monthly meetings, we usually have 60-90 minutes on a topic, with slides, pass-around examples, and show-and-tell. Too crowded in the shop to turn on any tools during the meeting.

Recently, we have been focusing on the design creation processes. Some of the reaction to the artsy stuff has been humourous to observe. We have a lot of WWII-era folks, some of whom are a bit more 'classical' in their tastes, shall we say...

Often, our speaker will feel like he has little to say, in a prepared presentation. The questions from the audience are what usually dictates the direction the chat will take. The interactivity is what we enjoy. All of our folks are pretty well-read. The owner of the sharpening service didn't think he had enough material to go more than 10 minutes, but we had to call a stop to things, with more questions to go, almost two hours into the discussion.

The workshops the club facilitates are independent of the actual club activity. Essentially, they are an activity hosted and run by the individual teacher/craftsperson. All financial and logistic issues are their responsibility, as I understand it.

And as I said, someone has generally met, or worked with, or taken classes from these folks before. But then, in the San Francisco area, we are blessed with many wonderful people and resources. It's probably a lot easier here.

Patriarch

Reply to
patriarch

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