On 25 May Jennifer was the keynote speaker at the Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia (SCLAA) Queensland Division breakfast to launch the 2011 Queensland Supply Chain and Logistics Awards.

Jennifer_Goddard_ and Vince_Aisthorpe_Supply_Chain_logistics_Association_awards_smallSCLAA is a non-profit organisation designed for professionals and practitioners in the Supply Chain, Logistics, Transport and Procurement industries. Each year they hold a state-based awards program (which gets fed into a National program) to recognise the wonderful people who make up this industry.

With her presentation was build around a focus on Enhanced Memory, Jennifer connected with the group by talking about the logistics involved in running the World Memory Championships.  Armed with photos and data from last year’s event in China, she wowed the audience with some of the amazing feats our Memory Champions achieve…

  • Memorising a deck of shuffled cards in 24 seconds
  • Recalling more than 100 numbers spoken at 1 second intervals
  • Recalling 28 decks of cards memorised in just one hour
  • Recalling 201 names and faces – perfectly
  • Memorising more than 4000 binary numbers
  • .. the amazing feats go on.

But of equal amazement are the logistical achievements Jennifer and her team make at each World Memory Championships (WMC).  Jennifer is the Senior Arbiter for the WMC responsible for organising the 10 competitions, and marking and checking every result.  In 2010 the WMC in China had 128 participants speaking 10 different languages – that meant a lot of organisation.

  • The competitor seating arrangement had to be thought through to ensure concentration
  • 500 packs of cards had to shuffled, set-out for competitors, gathered up, checked, double checked and re-stored
  • Some event papers had to be created in several languages – including English, Mandarin, French, German, Polish

With very tight timeframes, they marked:-

13,000 Abstract images
125,000 Binary numbers,
90,000 numbers remembered in the hour
25,000 Speed numbers
3,500 Historical and future dates
60,000 individual playing cards
9,000 random words
6,000 spoken numbers
11,000 speed cards
And matched 6,000 names with the face

That is over 450,000 items –
and those are just the ones the competitors got right!

  • In all Jennifer’s team checked more than one Million pieces of data.

When we think of Memory and we think of Supply Chains, Logistics, Procurement it may seem like there isn’t much connection.  But in her entertaining and insightful presentation Jennifer again showed that, as always, everything is connected to everything else, and she made that connection with the 60 SCLAA breakfast guests she spoke to.

Feedback from the participants

  • Speaker was very engaging and held audiences attention
  • Interesting – useful in every day use – both social and professional
  • Excellent session – informative and entertaining
  • Fantastic
  • Thank you for the very informative presentation
  • Brilliant. Very good techniques for remembering names. I’ll look for more info on Mind Maps and de Bono
  • Great mix of information on the Memory Championships and tips to improve.
  • Excellent – what I can remember of it!!!
  • A compelling start

If you would like to have Jennifer or me speak at one of your association meetings, contact me anytime at bill@mindwerx.com