Meaning

Prepared speeches

Three speeches on a theme of meaning. Stella gave “Deep Talk” (PM 3.4, vocal variety and body language), Tao spoke on “Driving My Car,” and Rebecca — by now a month into membership and on her third speech — gave “The Stage.” The Word of the Day was “profound”: something that goes far below the surface.

The evening’s evaluator for the first speech was Danny, then a guest, on what turned out to be the start of a run of roles that would make him a fixture within weeks.

The lighting committee

The photographs from this meeting started a debate. One member insisted the ceiling lights should always be left on, look how lovely the photos turned out. The photographer had a different theory, wondering aloud whether it wasn’t the lights at all but a filter. Which prompted a half-joking request to expense a reflector board.

A caption on one break-time photo, “King is listening to the music,” turned into wordplay that ran for several minutes, someone countering that it should be “Queen” instead, another asking whether a “tough girl” could still count as a king. Later a member shared an HTML file he had built to browse the group’s own chat history, which drew the evening’s most sincere compliment, everyone agreeing it was impressive and professional and that they’d learned something from it.

Behind the scenes

Same room as the previous week, at the far end of the big hall. The HDMI cable there still did not work, so screen-sharing went over DingTalk wirelessly — the workaround someone had figured out the week before. Several evaluation slots were still unclaimed the afternoon of the meeting, with one member asking who was covering IE and TTE and remarking on how strong the rest of the lineup looked.