Today’s meeting found Neil as the tribal chief for our theme – “Tribal Knowledge.”

Fair warning for future new members, Louis, today’s Table Topics Master, chose two new/returning members, Robert and Brenda, as well as “The Scooter” Brad.  Albert gave some nice tips on how to make the minimum time requirements.

Leif delivered his ice breaker speech and proved that “mind over matter” is very real.  He talked about some scary experiences in surgery, dream sequences and the art of meditation.  It is safe to say that we all learned to not mess with the nurse nor the anesthesiologist.

Robin is a man of many talents.  He recently gave a speech involving movies, and today’s speech was on audio compression, entitled “The Loudness War.”  He took us through decades worth of charts highlighting how music has changed, arguably for the worse.  The charts showed how music had great variability in dimension and dynamic but that has changed in the direction of lots of noise, with loud instruments overpowering softer instruments.  He also talked about the various steps of music production: tracking, mixing, and mastering.  He used PowerPoint as his visual aid – and it did just that – aided his presentation, a rare skill, as PowerPoint has a tendency to dominate presentations.

Taline.  I guess we should all take a hint, that when Taline has notes hidden on the palm of her hand, we need to be prepared for an awesome speech.  In the future though, I think we could all spare a buck or two for some heavy duty kleenex!  Though I can’t prove it, I am certain there were wagers on who would cry and who wouldn’t.  For those of you that missed it, I will try to summarize here, but won’t be able to do it justice.  Taline had me from the very beginning when she described the birth of Rick Hoyt because Rick and I share something in common – our umbilical cords were wrapped repeatedly around the neck.  How different our lives have been, though we started off the same!  Rick, pushed by his dad, have participated on many marathons and races, even the Iron Man.  Taline ended her speech by asking all of us – “What is your seemingly impossible dream?”

Amy was the evaluator for Taline’s speech and likely echoed a thought many of us probably had, about how this somber speech belongs in the Entertaining Speaker Manual.  Amy asked the question, but she also answered it: “like watching a building burn down is entertaining.”

Patrick was the Chief Evaluator, but this was likely too close to a coup d’etat for Albert’s (a.k.a. The Emperor) comfort.  For a moment Emperor Albert looked like he might be demoted to Prince Albert (ouch!) – but all is again well in the kingdom.

Ribbon Winners:

  • Best Table Topic:  Brenda
  • Best Speaker: Taline
  • Best Evaluator: Lora
  • Best Humor:  Albert
  • Most Enthusiasm:  Patrick