Club Speakers

Help! I have been put in charge of helping to find speakers for my dive club's (the Shark Bait Dive Club ) meetings. The woman who has been doing it has hit a brick wall and run out of ideas (it doesn't help that she's been doing it for years, and was happy to unload that chore onto me).

I've already managed to line up someone to speak at our September meeting, but I am coming up without ideas for after that. I wanted to see what other local dive clubs (we're in Orange County, so other LA and OC groups) are doing and where you're finding speakers. Is this a problem all groups are having, or are we just not looking in the right places? Anyone here willing and able to give us a presentation on something remotely diving related? A free club t-shirt is in it for you!

Any feedback, advice, and leads will be appreciated!

Some ideas:

Have dealers come in to give an update on what's new.
Have mfrs. come in to give info on their equipment (how does it work, things to consider in buying, etc.).
Have local lifeguards come to give a talk on safety or specifics of local spots.
Give someone an assignment to investigate a topic of interest and give a talk on it.
Have people get up and describe their favorite dive spots.
See if you can get someone from DAN to stop by and talk about accident statistics.
Or, just have a food fight.

mccabejc:

Some ideas:

Have dealers come in to give an update on what's new.
Have mfrs. come in to give info on their equipment (how does it work, things to consider in buying, etc.).
Have local lifeguards come to give a talk on safety or specifics of local spots.
Give someone an assignment to investigate a topic of interest and give a talk on it.
Have people get up and describe their favorite dive spots.
See if you can get someone from DAN to stop by and talk about accident statistics.
Or, just have a food fight.

Click to expand...

Thanks Jim,
I had actually already thought of having lifeguards give a talk - it would be interesting to get a Laguna Beach one in to talk about issues they see with divers, but I seem to be having trouble finding a contact for them. I"m going to keep looking, though.
DAN is another good idea - any idea if they have a local contingent? I think that their headquarters are in North Carolina or something, but they might have an affiliated dr who would be interested. Along the same lines would be a chamber volunteer who might be willing to talk to us. I'll look into that.
Thinking about other nearby dive organizations, I know that PADI's headquarters are local - maybe I could ask if they've got someone there willing to talk to us. Of course, they probably would want us to pay for them to speak to us, but for an extra $15 per person, we might be able to get a c-card in the deal. j/k - but it might be interesting to see what they could say.
Thanks for the feedback - this is helping me brainstorm ideas, too, so I appreciate it! Keep them coming.

Oh, and I don't think that the nice community center where we meet would appreciate the food fight idea, but we'll keep that in mind as a back-up, just in case I can't find anyone else.

Always willing to do a talk if there is the capability for video-based presentations. Just gave a very well-received one to Dive 'n' Surf's club.

However, because of my location on Catalina and logistics problems, I usually ask for $25 to help defray the cost of getting to the mainland. That could be waived IF I am going to be on the mainland anyway, but it is hard to predict that a month or more in advance.

Dr. Bill

And speaking of Dr. Bill, one of the unmentioned thoughts I had (didn't want to put him on the spot) was to have him come and give a talk on his 70 ft. out of air CESA (along with all of the other things he could talk about). I'd even show up for those.

Buy Gilligan a ticket and have him come over and give a knockout digital slide show! Heck I would consider coming down there for that!