World Class Speakers and Entertainers

In our discussion of historian Niall Ferguson and piss-poor monocausal social science, commenter Matt W. pointed to Ferguson’s listing at a speakers bureau. One of his talks is entitled “Is This the Chinese Century?” The question mark at the end seems to give him some wiggle room.

I give some paid lectures myself and was curious to learn more about this organization, World Class Speakers and Entertainers, so I clicked through to this list of topics and then searched for Statistics. Amazingly enough, there was a “Statistician” category (right above “Story Teller / Lore / Art / Power of Story Telling,” “Strategist / Strategies / Strategic Planning,” and “Success”).

There I found Gopal C. Dorai, Ph.D., who offers insights such as “vegetarians usually will not eat meat products, no matter how hungry they feel.” And “Cheating or lying for the sake of obtaining favorable treatment from others will be anathema to some people.” And “Life is a one-way-street; we cannot turn the clock back.”

I’d think a bigshot like Niall Ferguson could do better than that!

P.S. Another one of the categories is “Political / President Ford’s Son.”

P.P.S. I searched on “Paterno” but, no, he wasn’t there.

11 thoughts on “World Class Speakers and Entertainers

  1. Hey Andrew were you able to pull anything else up for Dorai? I searched him on google and seems like he teaches at William Peterson University but I could not find his CV or a faculty listing. I’m curious what exactly his qualifications are.

  2. And they copy from Wikipedia! look at David Berlinski’s page:

    http://www.wcspeakers.com/speaker.cfm?ID=3914&t=Keynote%20Speaker&n=David%20Berlinski,%20Ph.D.

    “… Science and Culture, a think-tank that is hub of the intelligent design movement…”. Note the missing article (a hub? the hub?)

    Now look at David Berlinski’s wikipedia page, in the Evolution section:

    “…Berlinski is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, a Seattle-based think-tank that is hub of the intelligent design movement…”

    • Perhaps they could get Wegman on their list! I heard he gives excellent presentations of other people’s material. But I have a feeling that Doris Kearns Goodwin is out of their price range. (I searched their page for Goodwin but all I found was Sandy Goodwin, RN, presenter of “Why Can’t You Be More Like Me? Using Personality Type to Build Relationships at Work & Home.”)

      It really makes you wonder how a class act like Ferguson got thrown in with these bottom-feeders. He’s a famous guy—shouldn’t he be represented by the speakers bureau that handles the Gladwells, the Levitts, the Charlie Sheens?

        • I assume he does speaking engagements for the same two reasons I do: (1) to make money and (2) to reach influential and interesting audiences he wouldn’t otherwise reach. For either purpose, I would assume that a higher-grade speakers bureau would be better than what he’s got.

        • I don’t know the guy, but it seems that his primary target population is the masses. Perhaps he believes that if the masses recognize him he will make lots more money and become more influential (perhaps run for office?).

  3. This is silly – google ‘speaker bureau niall ferguson’ and see how many organizations *claim* to represent him. All these sites are mostly middle agents- they know how to contact Ferguson’s real agent, and they’ll charge a premium on top of his normal speaking fee so they can collect a cut.

    p.s. you’re a dick!

    • Brittany:

      Good point. Not the P.S., that’s just stupid, but good point on the speakers bureau. The question then becomes, why did “World Class Speakers and Entertainers” choose to throw in Ferguson with their otherwise ragtag bag of speakers? And who (if anyone) is paying Gopal C. Dorai to say, “Life is a one-way-street”?

      • Did they throw Ferguson in? My understanding is that (officially) “World Class Speakers” is a voluntary organization; you have to fill out a form to register (http://www.wcspeakers.com/registration.cfm), and there doesn’t appear to be any fact-checking. It’s possible that Ferguson (or his agent) decided to just Google search “speaker bureau” and fill out applications for every site that exist.

        As for why Ferguson would associate with a ragtag band of speakers? The fact that we CAN assume that Ferguson is not part of a ragtag band of speakers might be it; people will recognize him from the riff-raf, knows who he is, and will probably be more likely to hire him then.

  4. I don’t know anything about how this or any other speakers bureau works, but a quick look around their site turned up names like Neil Armstrong, Bill Cowher, Dick Rutan, and Maya Angelou, just from a few randomly chosen categories where I figured I might recognise names. Hardly a ragtag collection of bottom feeders. I can’t see why Ferguson woudld object to being associated with them, no matter how they all got on the list.

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