Andy,

"The main problem I can see as a LN is how to contact members in a region to gain expression of interest in presenting at such an event? "


That occured to me too. In fact for the majority of the membership the IET in many ways has the characteristics of a broadcaster, i.e. lots of listeners but no practical mechanism to communicate the other way. That isn't a criticism, it is a simple case of the 'one-to-many' relationship. To some extent that is true of any large company too but at least everyone shares the same building so lots of 'many to many' and 'many to few' communication are possible. Engineers in a company might meet together in the proverbial pub but do IET members? I doubt if it happens often simply because the two relationships are different.


Our LN events begin with refreshments, which is an aid to getting a presentation to start on time. Any chatting is a bit hit and miss. Then we have the presentation and sometimes there is a degree of connection amongst the audience if the Q & A works well. And then the thanks are said and we rush home! It's a pity we can't do things the other way then we would have something in common to talk about. (That's the difference between a company and the IET, the former is focused on a product and the later is a broad church). I have been trying initiate some post-event discussion by posting a summary of our events on the LN Community pages with mixed results. I'm sure there are points that I miss or even misunderstood so let's discuss it!


I take your point about confidentiality, some of my working life came under The Official Secrets Act, but that is perhaps not an obstacle; keep it short, keep it to material in the public domain and perhaps keep it old? I would imagine that a consultant who has had many clients could tell a generic tale that identified no-one. Even a single-client consultant could probably talk about what they did rather than about the client. Just because most, (all?), 'normal' presentations are directly related to the presenter it doesn't follow that these proposed mini-talks have to be. Indeed that isn't the case for PATW; that's part of the format than can be copied too!


Here is an idea that is probably too 'basic' for members but might work for a young audience - "What Is Mathematics?". Well it's hard and it's sums! For me the first use of 'maths' rather than 'sums' was looking at Arithmetic Series. Now that is just sums or is it? Add the reverse series and halve the result, isn't that brilliant? It makes a good party trick for those in the know. Short, snappy and inspiring!


All we have to do now is to 'herd those cats'!

Andy,

"The main problem I can see as a LN is how to contact members in a region to gain expression of interest in presenting at such an event? "


That occured to me too. In fact for the majority of the membership the IET in many ways has the characteristics of a broadcaster, i.e. lots of listeners but no practical mechanism to communicate the other way. That isn't a criticism, it is a simple case of the 'one-to-many' relationship. To some extent that is true of any large company too but at least everyone shares the same building so lots of 'many to many' and 'many to few' communication are possible. Engineers in a company might meet together in the proverbial pub but do IET members? I doubt if it happens often simply because the two relationships are different.


Our LN events begin with refreshments, which is an aid to getting a presentation to start on time. Any chatting is a bit hit and miss. Then we have the presentation and sometimes there is a degree of connection amongst the audience if the Q & A works well. And then the thanks are said and we rush home! It's a pity we can't do things the other way then we would have something in common to talk about. (That's the difference between a company and the IET, the former is focused on a product and the later is a broad church). I have been trying initiate some post-event discussion by posting a summary of our events on the LN Community pages with mixed results. I'm sure there are points that I miss or even misunderstood so let's discuss it!


I take your point about confidentiality, some of my working life came under The Official Secrets Act, but that is perhaps not an obstacle; keep it short, keep it to material in the public domain and perhaps keep it old? I would imagine that a consultant who has had many clients could tell a generic tale that identified no-one. Even a single-client consultant could probably talk about what they did rather than about the client. Just because most, (all?), 'normal' presentations are directly related to the presenter it doesn't follow that these proposed mini-talks have to be. Indeed that isn't the case for PATW; that's part of the format than can be copied too!


Here is an idea that is probably too 'basic' for members but might work for a young audience - "What Is Mathematics?". Well it's hard and it's sums! For me the first use of 'maths' rather than 'sums' was looking at Arithmetic Series. Now that is just sums or is it? Add the reverse series and halve the result, isn't that brilliant? It makes a good party trick for those in the know. Short, snappy and inspiring!


All we have to do now is to 'herd those cats'!