High Production Speaker Series
The Explorers on the Edge Speaker Series is developed by Anturus in collaboration with Celebrity Cruises. The idea was to have a high calibre speaker series with high production values and bespoke content. Exploration means different things to everyone but our speakers are explorers in science, engineering, geography, adventure and more. We would look to develop and run a pilot programme in 2022 with a talented set of speakers, and then gain feedback, collect content, and roll the program out properly in 2023.
Design and Content of the Talks
Each sailing will contain the talks below. Each one 40 minutes long with a section designed for Q&A’s too. These can be done at any location on the ship but we’ve found venues like Celebrity Central to be particularly good as they add an intimacy that’s hard to get in the theatre. For special events and destination style talks the theatre is still a great venue. Added to this is an excursion day where the speakers join an excursion to add value to the wildlife tours or photography or any way they can.
-
Story.
Everyone loves a good story. The story element of the speaker series allows the explorer to tell a good, engaging, story from an adventure they were involved with or research they have done. This could also be interactive with audience members taking part, and stories about the world itself.
-
Practical.
The best speakers are ones that impart useful information, and that’s what the practical sessions are designed to do. Whether it’s how to spot the best marine life on your cruise, or how to get the best photographs on your excursions, this session will give practical information for the audience in a fun and engaging format.
-
Local.
Some of the best cruise ship talks are about the destinations we visit along the way. They don’t need to plan a customers entire cruise for them, but should add to their experience and enrich their sailing. These talks could be about the volcanic history of islands or the landscape you can see from your cabin. while being engaging and entertaining.
-
Excursion.
There is an opportunity for the EotE Speaker to join a Celebrity excursion and interact with the cruisers off the ship. The excursion would be in the wheel house of the speaker and we’d make sure they add value to the already wonderful CC excursions themselves, whether that’s wildlife, photography, history or landscape.
Pilot Project
-
Huw James
Alaska Cruise - August 2022
Huw James is a Welsh Scientist, Adventurer and Film Maker. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical and Royal Astronomical Societies and creates educational films and talks under his organisation Anturus.
Huw has been delivering live science shows for over 10 years. His audiences are over 750,000 people on 6 continents and over 2 million on TV and YouTube. His background in Astronomy and Geology has pushed him to explore the world on a variety of expeditions all for science.
His mission going forward is to inform a new generation of custodians for our natural world and everything that lives in it by tackling the big 3 problems of pollution, climate change and wildlife extinction.
-
Catherine Capon
Canary Islands Cruise - September 2022
Catherine’s life since university has seen her working in wildlife filmmaking and sustainability communication. Throughout this journey, she has kept the sense of purpose that has always been with her. At every opportunity, she has travelled to a new corner of the planet to see the wildlife and how the people interact with the environment around them.
She has visited places so beautiful that no photograph can truly capture them, and along the way, she’s tried to encourage others to join her.
It was these travels, through work and pleasure, that inspired her mission to write about and photograph the top wildlife hotspots on the planet.
She hope that by doing this, other awe-seekers and ecoadventurers will awaken and unite to live more consciously with our planet.
-
Sam Mitchell
Mediterranean Cruise - October 2022
Samuel (He/Him) is a British-born volcanologist and science communicator with research interests across volcanology, fluid dynamics, sedimentology, and marine geology.
His research and outreach has taken him across the USA, New Zealand, Japan, and to the far sides of the Pacific Ocean.
He has a Ph.D in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Hawai’i where he studied the styles and dynamics of large volcanic eruptions on the seafloor.
Prior to that, he obtained an undergraduate degree in Geology between the University of Bristol and University of California, Berkeley. He currently works as a technician and researcher at the University of Bristol.
-
Tracy Fanara
Caribbean Cruise - November 2022
Dr. Tracy Fanara is an engineer and research scientist with a BS, ME, and PhD from the University of Florida’s Department of Environmental Engineering. Tracy spent almost a decade as a project engineer designing water systems for projects around the world, before and during her research at UF, she focused on sustainable design retrofit of urban areas and water treatment through stormchasing to collect data. Tracy the was the design engineer on two nationally winning EPA design teams, was a National Science Foundation SPICE fellow, subcontracted for the United States Geologic Survey , and was selected as a Presidential Management Fellow by the US Federal Government.
Tracy spends time outside of work on communicating science (TV, podcasts, classroom visits and public speaking), was recently Xylem YSI’s Mission: Water, Water Hero, and was featured in Marvel’s Unstoppable Wasp which led to her co-produced comic series, Seekers of Science. You may have seen her on Mythbusters the Search and can see her on The Weather Channel as an expert guest on AMHQ and on the show Weird Earth, on CBS Mission Unstoppable as an expert, or Science Channel’s What on Earth.
Production.
We developed a style of talk for Explorers on the Edge that worked really well. Introduced by an Activity Manager, ran by the speaker, and then questions and answers hosted by an Activity Manager again. We would look to keep the production value of all the talks as high as possible and develop a specific stage design for each genre of speaker going forward.
Content.
We created 6 short ads for EotE that we could utilise straight away plus a couple of trailers. Going forward we would look to produce Celebrity specific content for EotE including photography, films, expeditions and talks, all designed to create content for the speaker series and Celebrity TV on the ships.
Videos for EotE can be found at the button below.
Speakers.
We have access to many great speakers from across the world. But we’d also want to make sure that the production value stays high. So we would run regular training sessions on public speaking, content design and the ships and destinations to make sure all the talks are top notch. Including quality control for all the speakers and slide decks.