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    Confessions of a Cruise Lecturer
    Confessions of a Cruise Lecturer
    Confessions of a Cruise Lecturer
    Ebook54 pages55 minutes

    Confessions of a Cruise Lecturer

    By Ronald J. Leach

    ()

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    About this ebook

    I have been a cruise lecturer for many years, with my wife and I traveling all over the world at the expense of cruise lines. “Confessions of a Cruise Lecturer” is based on my experiences.

    Here’s what you will learn from this book:
    What cruise lines are looking for
    Booking agencies and what they expect
    Passing the test - How to get approved to even be considered as a cruise lecturer
    How to write a proposal to be a lecturer on a particular cruise
    How to prepare your lectures
    What are the special techniques you need to lecture on the unique cruise ship environment
    What you need to bring with you
    Interacting with fellow passengers and cruise staff
    What the cruise lines expect from you
    How to manage your cruise lecturing career

    Happy (and free) cruising!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRonald J. Leach
    Release dateNov 15, 2014
    ISBN9781310219948
    Confessions of a Cruise Lecturer
    Author

    Ronald J. Leach

    About the Author I recently retired from being a professor of computer science at Howard University for over 25 years, with 9 of those years as a department chair.  (I was a math professor for 16 years before that.)  While I was department chair, we sent more students to work at Microsoft in the 2004-5 academic year than any other college or university in the United States.  We also established a graduate certificate program in computer security, which became the largest certificate program at the university.  I had major responsibility for working with technical personnel to keep our department’s hundreds of computers functional and virus-free, while providing email service to several hundred users.  We had to withstand constant hacker attacks and we learned how to reduce the vulnerability of our computer systems. As a scholar/researcher, I studied complex computer systems and their behavior when attacked or faced with heavy, unexpected loads.  I wrote five books on computing, from particular programming languages, to the internal structure of sophisticated operating systems, to the development and efficient creation of highly complex applications.  My long-term experience with computers (I had my first computer programming course in 1964) has helped me understand the nature of many of the computer attacks by potential identity thieves and, I hope, be able to explain them and how to defend against them, to a general audience of non-specialists.  More than 5,000 people have attended my lectures on identity theft; many others have seen them on closed-circuit television. I have written more than twenty books, and more than 120 technical articles, most of which are in technical areas. My interests in data storage and access meshed well with my genealogical interests when I wrote the Genealogy Technology column of the Maryland Genealogical Society Journal for several years.   I was the editor or co-editor of that society’s journal for many years.

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      Book preview

      Confessions of a Cruise Lecturer - Ronald J. Leach

      Introduction

      How would you like a free cruise, even an all-expense paid one? How about many free or even all-expense paid cruises? Well, who wouldn’t? Written by an experienced cruise lecturer, this book will tell you how to get a cruise lecturing position as well as what to do and what to expect if you a fortunate enough to get such a position.

      Of course, there is a hierarchy of people in most industries, and cruise lecturing is no exception. I have heard shipboard lectures from internationally acclaimed speakers such as Mary Higgins Clark and Frank McCourt, and I am sure that they were offered much more money and far better accommodations than I was. With the exception of celebrated speakers with such sterling international reputations, the offers to cruise lecturers probably fall within a relatively small range. This book will focus on this larger group and could have been titled cruise lecturing experiences for the rest of us. I will use the term cruise lecturer consistently throughout this book, but nearly everything said about cruise lecturing also applies to arts or crafts instructors, bridge instructors, dance instructors, face painters, balloon artists, and even religious leaders (especially rabbis and Catholic priests).

      Here are some examples of what most cruise lecturers get. The cruise line always provides a cabin for the speaker and one adult guest. Gratuities may be included for one or two people, or may not be included at all. Full or partial airfare may be included for the speaker only, for the speaker and a guest, or not at all. This airfare may be only for one-way travel, or may be for both the flight from home to the departure port, or from the final port back home. You may also get discounts from the ship’s onboard stores or even on shore excursions. On some cruise lines, cruise lecturers are allowed free shore excursions for themselves and reduced excursion prices for their guest in return for carrying a first-aid bag, evaluating the quality of the excursion, the stops visited on the tour, the difficulty of walking, the availability and cleanliness of restrooms at the excursion stops. Doing this in return for a free or discounted shore excursion amounts to quite a bit of savings for little effort.

      The best deal I ever got was two-way airfares for both me and my wife, free gratuities for two, and, of course, a free cabin.

      Why the differences in compensation? Because the cruise lines recognize that the compensation to a cruise lecturer is overhead. Giving a free cabin to you means that your cabin cannot not be sold to someone else. The cruise lines are especially interested in using lecturers when there are many sea days or the ship sails to many destinations that are unfamiliar to most cruisers. In these cases, the cruise lecturer may have maximum value to the cruise line because they greatly affect passenger experience and encourage return passengers. Obviously, a short cruise from Miami that visits only Nassau in the Bahamas and the cruise line’s private island has much less need for a cruise lecturer.

      Legally, as a cruise lecturer, you will be considered to be an independent contractor to the cruise line and the contract lasts for a single cruise, so you are free to shop your services around.

      Most, but not all, cruise ship lecturers get to go on cruises by way of a booking agency, which charges the lecturer a fee. Well-known lecturers, and ones with considerable experience with the same cruise lines and, often, particular cruise ships, may be able to negotiate directly with a cruise line. I know of at least three cases where that has occurred.

      While this book is directed to cruise ship lecturers, some of the included material, particularly

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