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EditorsApr 27, 2015
Listening at Conclave
I’ll be honest: I don’t typically get too excited about featured speakers. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve heard some great keynotes. But I’ve heard a lot of mediocre keynotes too. The great ones, the memorable ones, I can count on one hand. Or, I used to be able to count them on one hand, because now I have to add three more to my list: Terry Bradshaw, Stephen Dubner and Diana Nyad.
All three were featured or keynote speakers I caught at last week’s American Gem Society Conclave 2015 in New Orleans, and I found each of them captivating and humorous, truly giving the audience something to take away from the presentation.
While his speech might have gotten mixed reactions, former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw had me laughing out loud--his energized, interactive manner and ultimate message to keep things simple and take time to hug, kiss, shake hands and tell people you love them.
“You don’t want to wake up regretting what didn’t happen,” he said.
Fun fact--we learned that Bradshaw has a burro named Snoop Donk.
Journalist and Freakononmics author Stephen Dubner is a man who has mastered the art of storytelling, which was also the topic of his presentation.
“Stories are way more memorable than other stuff,” he said, giving the example of The Ten Commandments in the Bible; most people can’t recite them, but they know the stories of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and Isaac.
“The stories resonate, the stories live with us,” Dubner said. “That’s why you should tell stories; they work and change the way people think about their relationships with other people.”
On her fifth and final attempt, Diana Nyad completed her lifelong dream of swimming the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida in 2013.
Speaking of the final hours of her successful swim, Nyad told us that, “I thought about what this quest meant to my life and I said to my team, who didn’t quit either, ‘I guess I’m going to stumble up on that beach pretty soon and I guess someone’s going to take my picture, but we did this together, we made history together.’”
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