Public lectures for the "lay person"?

Ficheall

Supposing one were to have a weekly series of, say, 6 (independent) half hour public lectures of an afternoon aimed at random passers-by - what topics would people be interested in? Preferably avoiding religion, politics, philosophy, and similar bs..

One would be armed solely with a whiteboard and marker, and you'd have to catch and keep the attention of random people walking past, who presumably have no expertise in the area which you are lecturing on.

I'd be from a largely mathematical background, so everyday applications of simple mathematics, or interesting but simple mathematics would probably be what I'd be best able for, but we were also considering stuff like a talk on the proper usage of "there", "their" and "they're" and where to use apostrophes etc - which may sound patronising, granted, but some people could definitely benefit from attending. Or a lecture on how to change a plug, or similar.

So - what topics might people be interested in attending a lecture on?
And would any of you be interested in giving such a lecture?

There'd be no money involved, just an afternoon in the sun (if the weather cops itself on) and sharing some knowledge with others...

joeKel73

This sounds interesting... it's like TED meets busking.

mikemac

Most cities have walking tours

Does such a thing exist in Galway? Start in Eyre Sq and tell about the old days and cattle dealers doing their business. Go around the sites like tell the story of the hanging at Lynch's Castle. The plaque to Christopher Columbus. The Church where Cromwells troops trashed and put their horses. Nuns Island where one of the clocks was blocked out of spite.
Look across to the Claddagh and tell some stories, it's rich in history even if it was a very poor area, you can finish here

You could run in it a small area, not so much walking

If this doesn't already exist, could be an opportunity to make some cash. Even a student could put this together for a summer job

Ficheall

I'm fairly sure there are both walking tours and bus tours of that ilk in the city.

mikemac

I thought I'd spotted a gap in the market

But start anyway and undercut them! Worth a try OP

ben.schlomo

All im picturing is the Life of Brian.

Ficheall

"How corrective lenses work" might be a decent one...

snubbleste

How to park responsibly: a photographic essay
How not to litter
Manners:an introduction
Manners: Part I, II, III, IV
How to protest effectively
Query your tax dollars being spent
You and An Garda: your rights

Ficheall

snubbleste wrote: »

How to protest effectively
Query your tax dollars being spent
You and An Garda: your rights

I'm fairly sure that falls under politics...
While the idea would provide a soapbox, in the loosest sense, we'd probably prefer to avoid the activist hippie types and so on :P

snubbleste

Mr. Price in Terryland have cheapish whiteboards and possibly non-permanent colour markers. The Spanish Arch might be a good location. Off you go..

Ficheall

Ordered my whiteboard online this afternoon, should arrive at the start of next week.

I was actually thinking of down near Blackrock - there are lovely lecture hall seat-style steps down to the beach over where one kicks the wall. There is a high possibility that it won't work - but it could be an interesting experiment in any case.

loser2old4board

1. Money management advice, household budgets etc.
Sort of thing MABS do.

2. Respect. Respect for environment, and people.

inisboffin

'Wild' foods
Basic astronomy

Ficheall

loser2old4board wrote: »

2. Respect. Respect for environment, and people.

Would you stop if some randommer was trying to lecture to you about respecting people and the environment?

inisboffin wrote: »

'Wild' foods
Basic astronomy

We'll have some astronomy, aye - one of the other lads is doing a phd therein. I've no idea what aspect of astronomy yet, mind.

After some deliberation, I've decided that my first talk will be on rice.

Lockstep

This is a seriously good idea Ficheall, I'd be well up for attending these.

Ficheall

Cheers, Lockstep.
Would you be interested in giving any talks? I know it might only be history, but I'm sure some people might be interested :P

I think we're looking, at the moment, at 6 twenty minute talks followed by ten minutes' q & a from 11 until 2 of a Saturday afternoon, hopefully starting next Saturday, weather-permitting. We'd be hoping to run them from next Saturday, the 16th, to the 20th of August. People would be welcome to give one talk or several.

At the moment I'm thinking of giving talks on:
Rice, Prime numbers, How corrective lenses work, Usage of the apostrophe, Enough Irish for tourists to get by, and some sixth which I'm sure will occur to me at some stage - possibly some nice practical applications of matrices if I can come up with a simple enough example, or some very basic probability stuff.

I'll add further info on planned talks when people confirm, provided the mods don't object.

Any and all suggestions welcome.
Would love to hear from people who'd be interested in giving a talk or two...

Inky_Lady

Great idea, I'd love to come along (provided you can provide a rain free day!)

padraig71

Public lectures and q&a sessions are an excellent idea, but surely religion, politics and philosophy - which you dismiss, for some reason, as 'bs' - are home to the kinds of ideas that we should be discussing on the street. I'm all in favour of rice, wild food, proper punctuation etc, but I do feel that we, like our counterparts in Athens (where, coincidentally or not, Socrates was doing this kind of thing 2,500 years ago, thereby kick-starting the history of western philosophy) have rather more pressing matters to talk about right now.

Ficheall

Fair enough - dismissing them as bs was probably poor phrasing - I should have said that they are open to bull****ting, and bull****able. Religion/politics/philosophy, or at least large swathes thereof, are almost entirely subjective. Everyone thinks they know about those subjects, without having done any study thereon. It's a twenty minute talk, the aim of which is to convey some information, not initiate a debate on how many arms God has etc.
We don't want to start up massive arguments between people talking out their arses - we'd prefer it to be one-sided :P
There are plenty of avenues, I'm sure, for "pressing matters" you might wish to discuss, such as how you would resolve the banking crisis, legalise cannabis and introduce gay marriage, but this isn't supposed to be one of them.

Inky_Lady wrote: »

Great idea, I'd love to come along (provided you can provide a rain free day!)

Well, we can't guarantee a rain free day, but we won't be there if it's raining, if that helps...
Also - one of the guys is planning to give a talk on how you can predict the weather, if you wanted to catch that talk and then would know whether you wanted to risk the rain at succeeding talks?

Mrs OBumble

mikemac wrote: »

Most cities have walking tours

Does such a thing exist in Galway? ... If this doesn't already exist, could be an opportunity to make some cash. Even a student could put this together for a summer job

There are one or two companies doing paid walking tours.

Another boardsie and I looked at setting up free (ie tips only) ones in 2009, when the economy was dire and no jobs were to be had. We came to the conclusion that the amount of time we'd have to put in to make decent-enough money was excessive.

Interestingly though, I wanted to learn Google maps as part of the research. Practised by drawing a bus route, and then another one ... and that's where www.GalwayTransport.info came from.

You never know what interesting ideas might lead to.

Ficheall

Further suggested talks are on on "Who was St. Patrick?" and "Memorisation techniques", "Juggling for beginners", "Reading music" and there's an awful lot of maths-based stuff, given the people organising it...

Thoie

How about algorithms? Something that would help people break tasks down into simple steps. It has a lot of applications, and it's easy to start with a really basic example - how to make a cup of tea. You can get audience participation with that, as most people are familiar with the idea. Demonstrate how to break things into main tasks, and subtasks.

For example, step 1 is boil water. That breaks down into fill kettle, which breaks down into turn on tap, put kettle under flowing water, turn off tap...

Ficheall

Operation(MakeTea):=function(...

hmm...


Aye, not a bad smaoineamh at all. Would you give said talk?

Thoie

Ficheall wrote: »

Operation(MakeTea):=function(...

hmm...


Aye, not a bad smaoineamh at all. Would you give said talk?

Unfortunately I don't live in Galway, and not sure I'd be brave enough. I could certainly help put together a cheat sheet for the lecturer if that would help.

As well as the obvious application of code writing, task breakdowns can also be helpful for things like project management, and can be made more user friendly by having examples such as "planning a house move" or "planning a wedding".

Ficheall

Fair enough. Much obliged - I will drop you a pm if anyone is willing to give such a talk. We've a couple of computer scientists, so it'd be interesting to try to have them perhaps "re-apply" their thought processes to other things..

mikemac

Memorization techniques is a good one. Something along the lines of Tony Buzan and Derren Brown

When I was in GMIT some guy came in for an hour and gave free talk and got us to do exercises to remember completly random things, like coat hangers, ice creams and cats. But how to link them and remember

Years and years later I still remember

Of course, he wasn't just working just for free. He was promoting his night course which I signed up. Was around 80 euro for 8 weeks, hour and a half each class.
Reasonable price and he made some nice cash, about 15 in the class

Ficheall

Aye, Tony Buzan was what I was thinking. Seeing as there's only 20 minutes, it would be enough to just get people to memorise, say, a list of twenty objects, or a phone number, or somesuch.


And surely trying to make money out of it would take all the fun out of it

I would be very interested in attending one of these - any idea on a location? I reckon Eyre Square, up around the fountain, would be perfect.

Ficheall

I think we'll try finding our feet out at Salthill (as mentioned previously ) before moving in to face the little bratty types that do hang around Eyre Square.

sonandheir

Fichaell, think this is a great idea. Will definetly be there.

Shryke

It sounds cool to me. I'll check it out if I'm around town. Good luck with it.

Ficheall

Whiteboard arrived this morning. Decent size and portable. Reasonable for 100e. Small fault at the corner so they're replacing it tomorrow, but it looks like we'll be good to go on Saturday, weather-permitting.
Still vacillating over whether we'll give an introductory talk, or just launch into the first talk - it's not like we're likely to have an audience from the off in any case. By my reckoning we'll be short one speaker for this week - and while it's no difficulty for someone to give more than one talk, it would be nice if we could have all different people. I'm sure one of you lot must be happy to give a talk for twenty minutes? Let us know.
20 minute talks followed by 10 mins for q & a will be every half hour from 11-2, I reckon. Should be fun!
Low tide is at 12:30, so there shouldn't be an issue there, this weekend at least...

If you're down one speaker, then could you use that time to give the introductory talk and then launch straight into it?

Ficheall

(I actually have no idea how many speakers we have - I'm trying to make it seem a lot more organised than it actually is, and was hoping that someone might be cajoled into doing it if they thought we were short one person.. but thanks!)

What we could use help with, if anyone has anything suitable, is a stand for the whiteboard. We can't rest it in the sand, as it'd be destroyed, and it's too big for people to hold up for very long.
I do have one of those metal frames that they put temporary road signs on - someone chucked it over our back wall years ago - so we could fashion that into a stand, I'm sure. It's ungainly though, and we'll already be carrying the whiteboard about 5 clicks, so if it were at all possible to avoid lugging yon rusty piece of junk with us as well, that would be awesome.



edit: another thing ye could help with - I should probably set up a twitter account that could let people know which lectures were on every week, hateful and all as that social networking might be, for which we would need a "name" for these lectures. Suggestions welcome...

Mrs OBumble

Ficheall wrote: »

... I should probably set up a twitter account that could let people know which lectures were on every week, hateful and all as that social networking might be

Twitface has it's uses

How about "DOUGAL" ... seeing as it like an outside Galway version of TED. I'm not sure what that might stand for, but reckon you can work something out.

Ficheall

DougalTalks account created, Dougal was already taken.
If something better is suggested then we can change to that, but I quite like that one
It'd be a tricky acronym alright...

ScumLord

Ficheall wrote: »

DougalTalks account created,

Great name.

inisboffin

Ficheall wrote: »

DougalTalks account created, Dougal was already taken.
If something better is suggested then we can change to that, but I quite like that one
It'd be a tricky acronym alright...

Agree about the acronym too but how about;

"why Google it when you can Dougal it?"

Ficheall

:pac:

oh dear...

cranky bollix

will these lectures be taking place this saturday

Ficheall

That's the plan, aye..

Ficheall

Kk... assuming the feckers replace the whiteboard before then (they never arrived this morning) the talks are set to be on:
How Corrective Lenses Work,
Memorisation Techniques,
Reading Music,
On Hackerspaces,
Knots,
Juggling.

They're not in order, we'll play that by ear.

Yon twittery thing is up too for anyone who's on that.


edit: this Saturday at Blackrock from 11-2.

Ficheall

Btw - thank you to JustMary and inisboffin for the name and slogan, respectively.

And to think that they said that the people of the Galway City forum were a useless shower of gob****es...

Ficheall

New whiteboard arrived. Now all we need is a stand of some sort for it, and we're good to go.
Needless to say, if it's raining, this won't go ahead; unless someone can think of a nice suitable indoor venue..

pseudonym1

Best of luck won't be here unfortunately, but look forward to attending future lectures. Maybe you could post a thread a
Requesting temporary donation of an easel?

Average-Ro

AH, this sucks, I'm shooting a wedding tomorrow. Would have loved to come to this:(

Hopefully I can catch the next one. Good luck with it!

Ficheall

pseudonym1 wrote: »

Best of luck won't be here unfortunately, but look forward to attending future lectures. Maybe you could post a thread a
Requesting temporary donation of an easel?

I don't think an actual easel would do the trick. The board is 6ft by 4ft, so one would need two, and they'd need to be very stable.
We shall see.

To those of you devastated you might miss this first installment - I reckon it's going to rain tomorrow, in which case it won't go ahead. And we can always repeat talks which are particularly well-received, or requested.

Ficheall

It looks like the weather's not on our side for this one...
I think we'll have to postpone tomorrow's talks.

Ficheall

K, barring a meteorological miracle there'll be no talks tomorrow.
The best way to approach this now seems to be to have a list of people willing to give talks and, when the opportunity presents itself, to just round up a few available folk and go for it. There'll be no notice given then, of course, bar a mention on the twitter, but I reckon it's the only way to deal with the bull**** weather.

So if anyone is willing to give a talk, not necessarily at the next set of talks, but some time, feel free to drop a pm, or email the obvious email for dougaltalks at gmail. Or, indeed, if there's a particular topic you've always wanted to learn about/ get a lesson on, then sure fire that suggestion along too, and we'll see about getting someone to give such a talk.

The suggestion was made that we video the talks and stick them up on youtube... I hate cameras, and I reckon there are more than enough "tutorials" on youtube already, but I'm curious as to what general opinion might be - would you watch the talks online? be discouraged from giving a talk if it was put online? etc...

inisboffin

Ficheall wrote: »

K, barring a meteorological miracle there'll be no talks tomorrow.
The best way to approach this now seems to be to have a list of people willing to give talks and, when the opportunity presents itself, to just round up a few available folk and go for it. There'll be no notice given then, of course, bar a mention on the twitter, but I reckon it's the only way to deal with the bull**** weather.

So if anyone is willing to give a talk, not necessarily at the next set of talks, but some time, feel free to drop a pm, or email the obvious email for dougaltalks at gmail. Or, indeed, if there's a particular topic you've always wanted to learn about/ get a lesson on, then sure fire that suggestion along too, and we'll see about getting someone to give such a talk.

The suggestion was made that we video the talks and stick them up on youtube... I hate cameras, and I reckon there are more than enough "tutorials" on youtube already, but I'm curious as to what general opinion might be - would you watch the talks online? be discouraged from giving a talk if it was put online? etc...

Personally I'd prefer that they stayed 'live' and not be filmed. That's part of what makes them cool.

Ficheall

K, looks like the weather has finally copped itself on, so we're aiming to give this another go tomorrow. Unfortunately our lift is unavailable, so I dunno how long it will take us to cart the board and "stand" out.
The plan, though, is to start at 11.
If anyone reckons they'll be really bored tomorrow morning and able to give us a spin out, 'twould be much appreciated.
Venue is still Blackrock.

The "line-up" has changed slightly:
Memory Techniques, "Enough Irish To Get By" for Tourists, How Big Is Infinity?, Knots, Finding Exoplanets, How To Juggle, and possibly more.

I had a look through the "wanted" section in the Skills swap thread, and it seems the most 'popular' things people want to learn are, approximately in order of popularity are:
Driving, Irish, Spanish, French, maths, fitness/physio, cookery, website design/development, knitting, guitar, yoga, photography, interior design, German, sewing, back massage, hairdressing, Korean, piano, music reading.

Obviously some of these are impossible to teach in a lecture setting, and some are impossible to teach at the beach, but it's interesting to note what people would be interested in.

I reckon in the winter we'll try to find a room in town and give talks on more 'indoorsy' stuff. One lass is willing to teach people to knit, for example, but it wouldn't really work at the beach. Similarly website design/development requires more than a whiteboard and marker.
Driving is obviously completely out. The languages, when one gets to the even slight more advanced stuff, will need to be in a classroom. Guitar, piano, sewing, hairdressing won't really work well at the beach.
Yoga, back massage, and fitness stuff might be ok, but does one need a proper instructor for those, for fear of someone doing themselves or someone else an injury?
I've no idea how one would go about teaching photography or interior design...