So that's it folks. Another series over and time to go diving thank God. I really enjoyed all six shows. It just goes to show that there are many aspects to this diving lark and once you take a wee step back there is usually another facet of the activity waiting to be discovered.
I'd like to thank all the speakers and also the folks introducing the talks who did a great job:
Jim Warny (intro'd by Laura Mulhair)
Mark Dixon and Jeff Cornish (intro'd by Ian Lawler)
Des Quigley and Barry McGill and Stephen ? (sincere apologies I've forgotten his surname) (intro'd by Paul 'PT' Tierney)
Connie Kelleher and Karl Brady (intro'd by Jason Bolton)
Derek Flanagan (intro'd by Andrew Carroll)
Charise McKeon and Koen Verbruggen
For me the series was somewhat bittersweet. I had the pleasure and privilege of asking these folks to come along and talk and every single one of them accept and like the rest of the audience enjoy the show thoroughly. Less enjoyable was the moronic club politics of DUSAC which led to me being cut out of the organizing at the last minute and then to add insult to injury to have to listen to hypocrisy of them thanking me publically for my contribution. They didn't know who any of the speakers were or indeed much interest in the subject matter before the series but hey if it make the club look good and we sell some raffle tickets who cares eh? Well fuck you....
It hard to know what will happen with it from here. Trinity is no doubt a great venue for these talks but its subject to the vagaries of whatever idiot happens to be in charge of the club from year to year. They will claim it as a Trinity institution from now on but like anything that goes before a committee "organiser" the meaning gets lost pretty damn fast. It came reasonably close to being a paid ticket entry series called 'Xtreme Scuba' this year.
Anyways I don't want to end on sour grapes. Some folk in the club went beyond the histrionics and were actually useful. In particular Przemyslaw Madej aka Cosmo made very very good poster designs and Laura Mulhair for picking up the pieces once they had been dropped and just got on with it. As Diving Officer she made a very much appreciated apology to me for how matters transpired.
I've been congratulated on my involvement in this but the reality is I had very little to do with it since October. Well apart from advertising the events on forums and Facebook which the club seem to overlook quite regularly.
People have remarked on the quality of the speakers but I can't claim that as an original brainwave. I drew up the list of speakers from listening into conversations by people like Stewart Andrews, Barry McGill, Ian Lawler and Paul Tierney. I might have thought up of one or two speakers myself but that's all.
So there you have it. The talk series is a good thing, the speakers are the heroes and have been very generous with their time to entertain us. It up to the rest of us to ruin it.
Cheers, Stephen
