The Keynotes That I Could Give At The Drop Of A Hat

[joreth]

https://www.quora.com/A-conference-in-your-field-had-a-last-minute-cancellation-what-keynote-speech-could-you-give-on-short-notice/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper 

Q.  A conference in your field had a last minute cancellation, what keynote speech could you give on short notice?

A.  This actually just happened to me.  I was scheduled to give a presentation at a conference, and the day of, someone canceled and I was tapped to fill the slot in addition to my scheduled talk.  I have several that I can give with short to no notice and I can participate in panel discussions on a very wide range of topics with little to no notice.

I am available to come to any type of event where a talk about relationships and communication is appropriate and I can tailor my existing topics to match your group, as well as develop new talks for your group.  I have very reasonable speaker fees and I can work with individual groups and your budget.  This is not my primary source of income so I have some flexibility in accommodation.

My partner, Franklin, and I are also going on a road tour sometime in the near future (dates TBA) where we can be booked together or individually to speak at your event or as a Guest of Honor at your event along the way.  Please contact me for more information.

The Five Love Languages For Polyamorous Relationships:

Adapting the concepts from Dr. Gary Chapman's "The Five Love Languages", this workshop will cover what the Five Love Languages are, how to identify yours and those of your loved ones, and how to use them to better facilitate communication.  The ideas on this workshop can apply to partners, primaries, secondaries, spouses, metamours, FWBs, friends, and just about anyone else!  The Five Love Languages is just one more tool in the toolbox for clearer communication, expressing emotional needs, and showing love in relationships.

Breaking Up Ethically:

Former sweeties Joreth and Sterling team up on a book about how to break up!  The main part of this book is now a workshop!  Our society puts a lot of emphasis on the Fairy Tale where each person meets their soul mate as a teenager and lives Happily Ever After.  Consequently, we never really develop any skills for how to break up with someone in an ethical way.  We are also inundated with a lot of really bad models for breaking up.  After a very successful breakup (and some very dismal breakups), these exes share some tips based on personal experience, community observations, and a background in psychology and relationship communication on how to handle breaking up with someone ethically and compassionately and how to get dumped with dignity.

[can be presented with Sterling or solo]

Present Like A Boss:

How to craft a polished presentation for any topic and any venue, how to find your "voice" & "style" as a presenter, and how to use PowerPoint!  We'll cover basic tips and tricks for speech writing and stage presence, how to choose your own presenting style, little-considered flare that really makes your presentation stand out, and technical lessons on how to use the PowerPoint software and other technological considerations.  Attendees are encouraged to bring their laptops with them and try out the PowerPoint lessons right there in class!  Basic how-tos for the beginner along with some interesting tricks that even experienced speakers might not know, from a public speaker, teacher, media representative, and a PowerPoint Operator for some of the biggest public speaking events in the country.

Joreth has spent time in just about every public speaking situation you can imagine, including performance (acting, dancing, singing).  But in addition to being on stage, Joreth has also spent the last couple decades or so working backstage at concerts and large corporate conventions with arena-sized audiences and the top audio and video technology.  She brings her technical expertise as a camera operator, PowerPoint operator, and video engineer to explain how presentations look from the inside and back end, to better improve the experience from the front.

Simple Steps to Better Communication:

Like dancing?  Want to learn?  Don’t like dancing?  Can’t dance?  Want to communicate better?

This workshop is for you!

Partner dancers communicate with each other using a non-verbal process called Lead & Follow to negotiate steps and navigate a crowded floor with other dancers and obstacles.

Joreth & Sterling will break down this communication technique into simple exercises and explain how they apply to your everyday, interpersonal relationships.  You will receive real, practical tools to take home with you and increase your awareness and understanding of your partners and metamours.

[can be presented with Sterling or solo, and also with or without a focus on a particular style or category of relationship]

Poly 101:

Do you know someone who is polyamorous and want to understand them better?  Do you work with clients who might be polyamorous and want to better serve them or work with them?  Have you just heard of this word and want to know a little more about what it means?

This is the presentation for you!  This presentation is for laypeople, counselors, and anyone who might be curious about the basics of polyamory and isn’t necessarily polyamorous themselves.  We will cover some terminology, a little bit of history, and how it all works in a way that will help you to get a better handle on what all this stuff is when you talk to someone you know who is polyamorous.  And you may learn a little something about yourself in the process!

Polyamory & Skepticism:

What in the world does polyamory and skepticism have to do with each other?  Isn’t that, like, doubting everything you hear?  Why would you want to mix that with romantic relationships?

Both polyamory and skepticism are incredibly misunderstood terms, and have more to do with each other than one might think.  In this discussion, we’ll go over some vocabulary - what people *think* they mean and what they *actually* mean, some principles and core concepts, some parallels between the polyamorous and skeptical communities, and where the two overlap and where they diverge.

We will also address when, how, and why it’s important to put a little skepticism in your polyamory (and maybe a little polyamory in your skepticism?)

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Funny thing about nerds - part of the definition of a nerd is someone who is passionate about certain subjects and, with very little prompting, can talk about that subject in detail and minutia for ages.

Funny thing about me is that I'm not just a nerd, I'm a Renaissance nerd - I have LOTS of subjects that I can pop off about for literally hours at a time (see my recent post about someone casually mentioning Mexican gang slang resulting in a 5 hour lecture with multimedia examples on Cholo Culture in the 1980s in California).

So, just off the top of my head, here are some things that I think I could give a talk about with no preparation (but if I had time to prepare, I could give a fucking fantastic presentation about), many of which could be given as a broad overview of the subject or broken down into specific components and given as their own 30+ minute talk:

• polyamory (and almost every sub-section of that as its own talk);
• kink;
• science education;
• skepticism;
• poly and skepticism;
• polyamory in movies;
• solo polyamory;
  • why solo polyamory is not inherently contradictory with cohabitation;
• the history of partner dancing (and the history of its music);
• the history of each specific partner dance;
• how to partner dance;
• how to figure out which first dance to learn;
• dance shoes and which ones to buy first;
• how to use dance exercises as a non-dancer to improve your relationship communication; how to breakup ethically;
• the 5 Love Languages;
• the misconceptions of MBTI;
• how to give a presentation (with further advanced modules of stagecraft by itself and how to do a decent PowerPoint by itself);
• The Winchester Mystery House;
• Theatrical lighting 101;
• Life As A Career Stagehand (seriously just gave this talk to a couple of middle school classes a few weeks ago);
• Dealing with the media (how to interview for a news article or show without coming out looking like a fuckup):
• Tablecloth Circle Skirt Construction;
• how to make rewearable liquid latex outfits and boots;
• vaccines - the science, the history, the scandals;
• Pockets Are Political;
• The politics of fashion in European and American history;
• What is and is not actual fashion in:
  • the Victorian era
  • the Edwardian era
  • the 1920s (no fringe!)
  • pre-WWII
  • the 1950s;
• White appropriation of black culture in music;
• How "I like everything but rap and country" is racist propaganda;
• The interconnectedness of music genres;
• You probably don't "hate country music" because you probably don't even know what it is;
• How American politics and racism influenced music which influenced dance which influenced music which influenced politics...;
• Cholo culture;
• The Chicano movement;
• How the Chicano movement led to Cholo Culture;
• The role of women in either the Chicano movement or Cholo Culture;
• The Zoot Suit Riots

So if any of these topics is of interest to your community, group, conference, or event, or one of these topics sparks an interest in adjacent topic or question and you would like for me to address it, please let me know.