At the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, four Kossack trainees from The Climate Project took an impromtu opportunity Sunday morning to about 25 conference attendees between the nondenominational prayer service and the Blogger’s Brunch.
Most are familiar with An Inconvenient Truth by now (and, if not, then one is an unlikely reader of this blog space). The words “Global Warming” are not unknown. The Climate Project (TCP) is an effort to get face-to-face opportunities for a presentation of the “Al Gore briefing” to as many people in as many audience settings and groups as possible. TCP has trained over 1000 people, through multiple three-day training sessions, on the substance of the presentation and presentation techniques.
Each of us 1000+ bring our own expertise, our own personality, our own life experiences, our own personalities to the table. In this case, late Saturday night, four of us determined to give the presentation and figured out where and how to do it Sunday morning. (Thank you tip of the hat to Pastor Dan for allowing us to use ‘his’ room after he was done.)
Saturday evening, prior to the start of festivities and speeches, two of us went nearly hoarse announcing the event to people waiting in line to make ice cream sundaes. (Perhaps a fitting visual for thinking about presenting on Global Warming.)
Sunday morning, we got together to speak a few minutes before the presentation.
What is great about the entire process and about the community: we each have our own styles and here was a chance for us to show them off and learn from each other.
Four presenters, four radically different presentation styles. While we used one presenter’s computer and presentation (I was the one most flummoxed by not having “my” favorite slides), we each presented in our own way. And, we got the chance to learn from each other, from each other’s styles.
I always have a hard time knowing what to think of the audience reaction, did we reach anyone.
Well, sometimes you have the answer.
Over at MyDD, Natasha Chart has written the powerful Climate, Power, Omnibus. We evidently sparked something in her. From that excellent post:
At the Inconvenient Truth presentation on Sunday at Yearly Kos, some fellow attendees who’d gone through Al Gore’s climate presentation training told us three alarming things:
- 2006 is now the hottest year on record.
- The winter of 2006-2007 is now the hottest winter on record.
- The arctic ice cap may melt completely in as little as 15 years according to the latest data.
In the face of these dire circumstances, Congress continues to hem and haw, wheedle and whine, drag their feet like 10 year olds who don’t want to face bedtime. In spite of the fact that polling indicates strong public support for higher CAFE standards, even among union households, Republicans and SUV drivers, Congress is AWOL on fuel efficiency. And in addition to taking too little action on some issues, they’ve taken large, harmful actions with the idea of being helpful. Repeat after me … corn ethanol is an unmitigated disaster.
Well, Natasha has written a powerful piece. Proud to say that I had some, small part in sparking it.
0 responses so far ↓
1 SharonRB // Aug 8, 2007 at 8:26 pm
I thought it was a great session — even though I’ve seen the movie three times and the presentation on another occasion. I’m so glad you found a way to do it. Too bad global warming wasn’t covered in the presidential forum, though. At least in Richardson’s breakout it was the first thing he mentioned — he wondered why it hadn’t been addressed, too. Great meeting all of you. Now, everyone, go get that low-hanging fruit — everyone needs to do their part and maybe we can actually save the world.