Honest, I am Not a Lecturer

Mid'n 3/c Daley on BB-64

CRUISIN' WITH JOE

I give talks on cruise ships about a lot of different things.  Sometimes I talk about the places the ships are visiting and sometimes I talk about subjects that somehow have to do with the sea and the life around it.  One day I might talk about Ainu and Eskimos and how all of the Native people in the Americas most probably came across the Land Bridge that joined Asia and Alaska and the next day I could be talking about Pirates or A Famous Chinese Admiral You Never Heard About.

These talks are based on my life long fascination with the sea, with my experiences as a Navy Midshipman and Officer and a life traveling and living all over the world as a Yankee Peddler working in the ports and countries that that abut the world's oceans.

When I am asked to join a cruise ship and give a few talks my preparation is fairly simple; I find out what kind of people are going to be aboard and I look at the route that the ship will take.  I dig into my memory bank to determine what personal experiences and insights I might have that apply to the itinerary.  Then I go over any source material I have at hand; old correspondence, media I accumulated during my visits or work in the area and publications I collected.  With that basis I decide whether there is a particular angle or aspect of the place that I feel can be used to make the talk more than simply a travelogue or recitation of places and dates.  I fill in the gaps or enriching details by research both in the analog and digital worlds.  Much of the detail comes from the digital universe.

Because the talks are designed for audiences that are interested in broad brush treatments and not the minutiae of academic detail I do not footnote the citations I use.  In some cases I do not take and repeat a huge set of facts but read source material and attempt to integrate the central themes or approaches into my talk.  The challenge is to deliver factual information without having the audience glaze over out of boredom.

Another thing I try to avoid is to give a “lecture” about the topic I am covering.  A lecture can be as deadly as it sounds; a didactic talk that is designed to teach or tell something to an audience that better pay attention and listen, or else.  I don’t like to lecture; I like to talk with the audience as if they were sitting around and we were shooting the breeze.  Because I often talk about real things in real places there is a tendency to slide into the fact filled approach.  You know, so many tons of bauxite exported that represents x % of the hard currency earned approach.  Instead of relying on a facts and figures cataloging of a country I try to use my own experiences to move from facts to stories of things that have happened and how and why the country works or doesn’t work the way it does.

That sounds fairly straightforward.  If I have given the same or similar talk before all I should have to do is dust off the old Mac Keynote slides, go over my notes and make sure that my tuxedo shirts are starched and ready to go.  In fact, I end up obsessing about the topic and spend days, weeks or maybe even months re plowing dirt I have already dug up and making sure that there is not a better picture of a Howler Monkey I can use to illustrate that portion of my Belize the Beautiful talk.

Because I end up doing so much repetitive effort anyway, I thought I would get my notes down on paper and make them into something that my cruise-mates can carry away with them or pass on to friends who are thinking of traveling the same waters.  That is the reason behind Cruisin' With Joe.


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