Bio.for David Allard Guest Speaker 27th March 2018

David Allard, bent on the pursuit of happiness, in between travelling from Auckland to Wanaka and work!

A current Member of Devonport Rotary and a part time Wanaka resident for 14 years, David started his working life, initially as a Computer Programmer, then became a pilot. He spent the next 40+ years, flying mostly for Air NZ but also had a couple of years in the Middle East, flying for Gulf Air. He piloted the B737, DC10, B747, then as Fleet Manager introduced the B777 into Air NZ’s operation. David was privileged to fly the B777 at Warbirds over Wanaka and was also Flight Instructor and Airline examiner on all of the aircraft flown.

He currently works as a part time B787 Flight Simulator instructor and Examiner. He is married with , 2 adult children, is a keen skier, kite boarder and mountain biker.

Every year we are inspired by the sincere dedication of the contestants for the Rotary Speech Competition. Tuesday night was another outstanding example of the high calibre of contestants our 3 adjudicators had to choose one to represent their school at the Rotary District Conference in Dunedin

Sonja Palmer and Hayley Yule did not make it an easy choice

Hayley won first place with her presentation giving us the hard cold facts about Facebook which has over 2 billion monthly users as of 2017 and is worth over half a trillion dollars.

Facebook and some other social media platforms conduct some very unethical research experiments by controlling people’s emotions based on what their news feed showed them. Is it the truth you ask? This top secret psychological experiment on its users was later published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a scientific journal. And yes, their study discovered it to be true that if all the content on the users feed was negative, then they were most likely to post negative images and visa versa. The data was collected by your likes, the comments made, the names you put in your search bar.

Studied subjects were split into negative feeds and drilled with negative comments thus driving their subjects into a life of misery and gloom. The psychological manipulation that Facebook caused was later documented to create potential mental illness such as depression and anxiety. However the positive feeds displayed outgoing happy behaviour and life was good.

Hayley proved that facebook failed the Four Way Test and suggested we should all think carefully about how much power we give to Facebook

Those who missed this stunning speech can go to Conference to hear her full presentation

Best Wishes Hayley

Sonja came 2nd hard on Hayley’s heals discussing our environment being on the verge of collapse and why . Her research of the developments in the past 50 years were chillingly honest but her passionate inspiration for correcting the mistakes of the past was a deceptively simple solution. She cleverly connected the building of good will and better relationships very positively.

Sonja compared the needs of five year olds to that of a fifty year olds pointing out that as we age we lose the joy of life and creativity with the pursuit of sciences and maths. She reminded us that it is our life and we need to take time to dance.

Both Sonja and Hayley had obviously spent a lot of time preparing for this competition and should be justifiably proud of their efforts

Rosie Burridge