October 18, 2015

Curtis The Mentalist Delivers a Passionate Keynote Address During The Skills USA Kansas Fall Leadership Conference


Curtis The Mentalist speaks at Skills USA conference in Augusta, KS.

The conference was a jam-packed two days of presentations, workshops, competitions, interviews, judging, games and fun.  Skills USA team members and their advisors came from all over the state of Kansas to attend this conference.  Some of them were taking a shot at becoming state officers within the organization.  A responsibility carefully bestowed upon only a small handful of men and women.

In addition to be opening and closing ceremony keynote address, I had the privilege of teaching my workshop "How To Super Charge Your Memory" to a very diverse range of students, advisors, and faculty.  I first demonstrated my ability to memorize an entire 100-page magazine (a current issue of a magazine that was only a day old and fresh off the shelves).  The students randomly selected pages from the magazine, and from sheer memory recall along I was able to tell the the contents and details of any individual page without looking at it.  Then I proceeded to tell them exactly how this is done and before they left the workshop they were stunned at their ability to recall the simplest list of random item.  I think I had as much fun teaching this workshop as the students did attending it!


Interviewing The Students


Curtis The Mentalist delivers a passionate keynote address during the Skills USA Kansas Fall Leadership Conference.

I also had the privilege of spending a few hours interviewing the individual candidates who were running for state office of Skills USA Kansas.  This was a real treat and honor as I met many brilliant and highly motivated young men and women who had so much to offer.  While I had no part in the final decisions of selecting the officers, I did my best to judge these lovely young students to the best of my ability and spent some time teaching them how to improve their interviewing skills.


A Blindfold Made of Gorilla Tape


Curtis The Mentalist Gorilla Tape Blindfold Act.
Curtis The Mentalist performs a blindfolded stunt for the students at Skills USA Leadership Conference.
I received so many requests from the students to do some demonstrations of mind-reading and other feats of mentalism that I spent some time during the closing ceremony address entertaining the group with some of my fun and usual mind-reading demonstrations, to include my Gorilla Tape Blindfold Act.  The students challenged me on every turn, and I was able to meet their challenges with great success.

Working with all of these remarkable young people gives me a real hope that the future of the United States is in good hands.  I'm looking forward to seeing many of them again and speaking and presenting again at the State Conference in April 2016!