Christchurch Branch Event: Art of Debate – Hone your powers of persuasion and critical thinking

Are you the sort of person who likes a good argument? Well, Terry Hall is going to show you how to do it properly. At our next meeting he's going to be giving you the low-down on competitive debating. But this is not the cheesy comedy stuff that Jim Hopkins and co used to do on TV years ago - this is the real deal. He'll run you through the various formats and types of debate, what each speaker in a debate does, and how they are judged.

Then, the pièce de résistance: he'll pull out his 1983 Sanyo ghetto blaster and play you a couple of speeches from a real 1980s university debate featuring some of the top debaters of the era, which we'll then analyse. You'll be able to listen to the rest of it online later as well. If there's time, we might even hold a mini-debate with a couple of speakers on each side, too.

We don't expect you'll be super-argumentative after this session, but you'll go away with some great new ideas about persuasion and critical thinking that you can apply in the workplace.

Where and when

Streamliners, 4 Acton Street, Christchurch Central map

Tuesday 19 March. 5:30 pm networking. Meeting from 6:00 pm until 7:00 pm.

Cost

The cost includes nibbles and drinks.

People who register via the website:

  • Members $11.50 incl GST.
  • Non-members $17.25 incl GST
  • Student members free of charge.

People who pay at the door:

  • Members 15.00 incl GST
  • Non-members $20.00 incl GST
  • Student members free of charge.

Note: Members = members of TechCommNZ and affiliated organisations: NZATD, ASTC, PRINZ

About the speaker

Terry Hall graduated from Canterbury University with a Commerce degree before working at the Patent Office in Lower Hutt for almost ten years as a Trade Mark Examiner. He was extensively involved in the Office's first computerisation and was a pioneer of using the then-emergent Internet in Trade Mark research. Later he returned to Christchurch and obtained an NZ Diploma of Business & Information Systems. Today he works at CORE Education in testing and documentation for IT systems.

His background in debating and public speaking goes back to his days at Canterbury, where he was a member of the Debating Society for several years. While up in Wellington he was part of the Wellington 22 Club team that won the 1993 Premier Reserve Grade Trophy, the second-highest debating grade award in the Wellington area. In his spare time he has for some years run a web site and e-zine supporting controversial figure skating badass Tonya Harding - long before she was trendy, too. And that's definitely a good way to get into plenty of arguments.

Event Registration