Jim, I can tell from your response that you have been involved at a very high level of horticultural science for many decades. Such is not the case in my small, tourist-oriented community in Summit County, Colorado. The Calochortus speaker was NOT invited by the "person responsible for recruiting speakers". She WAS that person! In fact, she was the president of the garden club at that time! And, yes, she was the type who took every opportunity to show everyone "how knowledgeable" she was about gardening. As to your criticism of me and the other attendees remaining silent during the president's performance, no one wants to ask a question that may sound "dumb". And, it's really hard to ask a question when you have no understanding of what is being presented. I, too, have given many talks and even several one-woman seminars. I never felt these were "performances." The goal of my talks or classes is to impart full understanding to the participants. If they don't understand my meaning the first time through, I approach it from a different perspective, sometimes using familiar (but totally unrelated) examples in the average person's daily life until I see that "light bulb" click on above their heads. When I lead wildflower hikes, it's common for me to identify the same species 20 or more times over the length of two or three hours. I never make the questioning person feel "dumb" because I already identified that same species 19 times. I treat each person's question as if I am hearing it for the first time and, in the case of wildflower identification, I will go out of my way to expand on the answer with other tidbits, such as if it happens to be edible or poisonous or why it grows where it grows or how widespread throughout the United States or the world it may be or maybe a little historical story that I feel may help everyone remember that species. In this way, the group doesn't judge that 20th questioner as being "dumb" or "inattentive" because the 20th answer contains a few kernels of new information that will expand upon the familiarity all those attendees will ultimately have with that one species. On a given summer wildflower hike with my husband Klaus, we will find and identify over 100 blooming species in about 3 hours. When I lead the same route, I tell my group they should be happy if they go home that day having learned one new species. Sometimes I give them "tests" to reinforce identifications. Sometimes I tease them and tell them I won't lead them "out of the wilderness" and back to the security of their cars unless they can recite the names of ten new plants they saw that day. Of course, I wouldn't really do that. It always get a laugh and relaxes the group so they actually learn more names by the end of the day. Jim, I see you at the top of the ladder but I'm just a few steps up from the bottom rung. Someone has to teach and encourage the "suburbanites" and other unknowledgeable new gardeners so you will continue to have audiences to perform in front of in the future. We need people like you. I admire your level of knowledge and experience. If I get halfway up that ladder, I'll be happy. Jane HendrixMountain View Experimental GardensPeak 7 Area - Breckenridge, Colorado U.S.A.Elevation: 10,000 feetUSDA Zone 4Website: http://www.picturetrail.com/hendrix ---------- Original Message ---------- From: "Jim McKenney" <[email protected]> To: "'Alpine-L, the Electronic Rock Garden Society; postings copyright by authors.'" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Alpine-l] Names vs. Numbers vs. GPS?? Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:25:35 -0500
Jane Hendrix wrote: “I agree with you, Kyle. I remember back about 18 years ago at a local garden club meeting when one of our "extremely knowledgeable" members gave a lecture (without slides or hand-held photos) on Calochortus…” Jane, I wouldn’t blame the speaker for your experience with that lecture eighteen years ago. If the person in your club responsible for recruiting speakers did not give advance publicity (which surely would have mentioned the topic, Calochortus, and thus given a heads-up to those who might attend) then the recruiter deserves the blame. I’ve been speaking to garden clubs here in the greater Washington, D.C. area for nearly forty years. Most clubs are so desperate for speakers that little consideration is sometimes given to getting a good match between speaker and club. Take a look at it from the speaker’s perspective: since the speaker is likely to be the person who knows most about the topic at hand, the speaker has to decide the extent to which they will make that knowledge accessible to the audience. I’ve thought of every presentation I’ve ever given as a performance – a performance during which I want to give my best. It’s not my nature to willing dumb down a presentation; my response to that request would be “get someone else”. My worst ever speaking experience resulted from such a mismatch. A friend had been scheduled to be the speaker at a meeting of an organization in my community, an organization of which I was not a member. At the last minute, he had to cancel. He asked me to fill in for him, telling me only that they wanted a speaker on a gardening topic. I had several programs at hand, selected one and showed up on time. The group turned out to be a local civic group, a group accustomed to hearing representatives of utility companies and governmental agencies as speakers. The program I used had been very well received by other (gardening) groups. I performed well. But when the lights went on forty minutes later (during which forty minutes no questions were asked and my voice was the only one heard – unless light snoring counts as a voice) I faced a room of drowsy, puzzled, bored suburbanites, most of whom probably couldn’t wait to get home and turn on the tv. The experience was unfair to them, and it was unfair to me. My next worst experience surprised even me. Long before the gardening public caught on to the pleasures of minor bulbs, I gave a program to a local gardening group to which many friends belonged. The group included several professional horticulturists, and for me the presentation thus involved a bit of challenge and one-upmanship. Believe me, it was an intense, blockbuster program, one in which I pulled all the stops to strut my stuff (great mixed metaphor, right? Can you see a pouty fan-tailed cock pigeon pecking away at the organ stops?) . Plenty of people loved it. But as I was breaking down the projector, the president of the club came over to me and said in dismissive tones something on the order of “we’re more a social club, we’re not into it that much”. Thanks, bud. As a speaker, I’m not at all sympathetic to audiences which do not ask questions or in some positive way interact. People who sit there like bumps on a log deserve what they get. Jane, it’s incomprehensible to me how you or anyone else sat through that talk without saying something to give the speaker an idea that something was amiss. And then to think that you all got together and decided that the speaker only did it to impress you: yikes! Even the vainest people have a life, and when they give up their time from that life to entertain you, I think thanks, even if only the chilliest most formal thanks, are the appropriate response. Jim McKenney
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