What do you do when over 800 middle school girls condensed into one giant room are screaming at the top of their lungs and JUST WON'T STOP?
Join in, of course.
I attended GESET this Tuesday. "Girls Exploring Science, Engineering and Technology," a one-day, once-a-year event at the Denver Convention Center that gathers hundreds of gossipy, hyper young teenagers and attempts to pique their interest in, you guessed it, "science, engineering and technology." Or, as many like to call it --- "boy's stuff."
The girls got to attend workshops that ranged from the actual dissection of a sheep's heart to virtual dissection of a former death-row inmate cadaver. There were workshops in which they programmed their own video game and then got to take it home to play, workshops that introduced them to architecture, electrical circuitry, astronomy (complete with Starlab experience!)... the list goes on. Each workshop I snuck a peak at (and I did so to several), was awesome. The girls were enraptured. The workshop leaders were excited and passionate. This is just the kind of encouragement girls need to pursue something in which they don't always feel, for whatever reason, qualified or included.
The day kicked off with, of course, a greeting from the bigwigs sponsoring the event and a couple others. Three people spoke, each with different approaches to maintaining the attention of the girl-mob at the tables in front of them. And I, standing in the back, had the interesting opportunity to see what worked ... and what did not. I'm going to briefly go over them here, because for any of you public speakers out there who didn't already know, the goal of a good speech is to get the back -- those of us who are constantly bombarded with distractions: opening and closing doors, workers running back and forth, audience members coming for refills on water. They all make it difficult to pay close attention to what you're saying. But if what you're saying is something that draws me, all those annoyances will be zoned out, because I'll be watching you. This situation is ideal, because who are we kidding here? 800 adolescents is the ultimate test in public speaking.
1)Speaker number one chose a sad route. Her words, although I'm sure she was obligated to do this, focused on thanking the sponsors, and then relating them to "doing great things for girls like you," blah blah blah. The girls in the back: didn't hear a pinch of it, not because they couldn't hear, but because they found nothing worth hearing.
2)Speaker number two was also disappointing. She was a freshman in college, no doubt chosen to speak because of some affiliation with the GESET planning commity. She announced that in the 8 months she's been in college, she's changed her major 9 times. Really? Because that seems ridiculous and highly unlikely. But the girls in the audience probably wouldn't realize that. Either way, why this girl, over, say, any one of the people giving the workshop, or even just any girl who was actually dedicated to a field in the sciences or technology, would have been a better person to stick up there. The girls in the back: unimpressed and inattentive.
3)Speaker number three. Ahh, yes. This woman has worked with teenagers. The first thing she did was have everyone stand up, just for the sake of letting them know that this was different -- she was different. It was lame, but it worked. After that little exercise she asked how the girls were doing. We've all witnessed this before. The enthused speaker tries to get everyone all pumped up. "Hey! How's everyone doing here today? Are you ready to have fun?? ... I said, 'ARE YOU READY TO HAVE FUN TODAY!?!?!" Crowd goes wild. Works every time.
Next she gave the "we need you" spiel. Not the spiel that just points and yells, but the kind that makes a girl really understand it. Tech industries, sciences -- they DO need girls, and girls need to know it. As my boss always says, "We'll never know what we're missing without more women participating in information technology. We can't measure absence."
Speaker number three then asked a series of questions:
"Who here wants to someday work at a job that helps people figure out their biggest problems?"
"Who here wants to someday work at a job that handles something that affects everyone in the world?"
"Who here wants to someday work at a job that pays really, really well?"
Well, gosh, this lady wins. What middle schooler isn't going to raise their hands to any one of those? And saving the 'who wants to be a money-bags' one for last was perfect on her part.
Needless to say, the girls in the back: Went for it. Completely. Hands clapping, hootin' and hollerin', ready to jump into a day full of learning -- all because someone pitched it in all the right ways.
-Fred Gluck, former software developer and manager at Bell Labs
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