Saturday, July 8

It's my turn to present a 3-minute talk to a Rotary meeting as part of a campaign to make new members feel they know a bit about the old hands.  I have a couple of weeks to prepare it but I'm already worried about how it will turn out.  The concept, for a start, is questionable.  Why 3 minutes?  Is it like a woman's skirt - long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to be interesting?  Or is it the anticipated length of time before the audience gets bored?

It's not like the twenty-minute PowerPoint presentations I do from time to time where I have a certain amount of information to cover, and some visual connection to hold the attention.  Nor is it like the chats all of us have at the dinner table or over coffee where we take it in in turns to share anecdotes from our respective lives.

It certainly doesn't have the scope of a full-blown biography and it can't compare with the stream of consciousness stuff of a blog like this one. So, how do I approach this?  What do they want to hear?  More importantly, what am I prepared to tell them?  How do I make it interesting enough to hold their attention?  

We've had some crackers in the past.  One member used her three minutes to list all the schools in Tasmania where she had taught.  Another fellow said, " I went to Meander Primary, then Deloraine High School, then worked on the family farm.  I married Tammy in 1972 and we have 2 kids.  What else do you want to know?"

I know it's useful if you can claim acquaintance with someone famous.  People are always interested if you can say you sat beside Beyoncé on a plane flying to Mudgee and that anecdote could conceivably take up half of the allotted time. But, sadly, it didn't happen.   Marilyn and I had dinner with Sir Edmund Hillary once but it was in 1968 and all I remember of the encounter is that he was tall - 15 seconds tops!

No doubt I'll muddle through.  I can't guarantee it will be memorable but, if I avoid embarrassment, that will be enough.