This past Friday evening, Michael and I gave the opening presentation in the 20th edition of Talk20Hutch.
The format is simple: 10 presenters tell a 20-second story throughout 20 slides. The stories vary, from passions to community collaboration to personal struggles and triumphs. Each story is unique, and each story teaches us more about our neighbors, our communities, and ourselves.
Talk20Hutch was a collaboration between Kari Mailloux and the late Patsy Terrell. It debuted in the auditorium at the Hutchinson Public Library in January 2014 and quickly outgrew that space.
Friday’s event marked the 20th session, and Michael and I were asked to present. Originally, we were scheduled to go second, but we discovered we had been moved to the first slot.
We had built our 20-slide deck, but we didn’t write commentary for each slide. Michael competes in debate and forensics, performs in several theater productions, and is a well-spoken extemporaneous pro.
A millennium ago, I also participated in high school debate and did a lot of public speaking, much of it improvised, in college and my early professional career.
We decided that we already knew what we wanted to talk about in each slide, so we took turns discussing the visuals and telling the story of how we met Michael’s proposal to start a local news publication and what we have learned and accomplished along the way.
I want to highlight two slides; a July 14 newsletter mistake and its counterpoint. I like to write my editorials in the late evening. Michael had finished filling in the links and headlines for the other articles published the next day. He left a placeholder for my editorial. I just needed to add the article’s URL and the title. It was late. I set the link but left the header.
When Michael and I are brainstorming, I sometimes ask for editorial suggestions. He jokes, “You’re old. Yell at something!”
The newsletter landed in our subscribers’ inboxes with the editorial header, “Opinion: Gina Yells at Something.”
The next slide was my counterpoint—a screen capture of my editorial published on August 13, 2023, titled “Evergy proposal chills economic development in Kansas.”
“Old lady yells at Evergy” won first place in Div I, II, and III Editorial Writing at the Kansas Press Association awards. My favorite moment of our presentation was laughing at a humorous slip-up with a room full of strangers.
The 20th Talk20Hutch was in the books. Our fellow presenters discussed moving back to Hutch and deciding the stay, transformative personal fitness journeys, remodeling a historic house out of the love of history and community, fixing a broken house while tremendous personal odds, hiking for miles to find the perfect spot to watch a solar totality, growing amazing tomatoes in the back yard, overcoming deep trauma and drug addiction and publishing a book about those experiences, and bravely stepping out of one’s comfort zone to try new challenges…. the stories were unique, personal, inspiring and amazing.
In her opening and closing remarks, Kari invites the presenters and the audience to “continue the conversation.” Understanding that community is a collaboration of unique individuals who bring their own dreams and aspirations mixed with personal experience encourages us to grow and build more connections. It makes us stronger. It is the 21st-century version of wandering the neighborhood and sharing iced tea and lemonade on the front porch.
You can watch the archived video here if you missed the in-person event or the live streams on Facebook and YouTube. Talk20Hutch’s YouTube channel contains most of the prior presentations, and watching some of those amazing stories is worth your time.
