On 5 June Mensa Pretoria held our annual Games Evening.  We combined it with our monthly New Members Evening to create an event full of fun and games.  Games like Trivial Pursuit - Bet you know it, Fluxx and Dixit were played.  We welcomed our newest members over a drink and some good supper from the kitchen at the Pretoria High School Old Boys Club.

PBHSOBC TV Donation

On 18 May the Mensa Pretoria Committee met with Louis Legat from Pretoria High School Old Boys Club to hand over the television donated by Mensa Pretoria.  This donation was made in gratitude of our long relationship with this club.  Mensa Pretoria has been using this facility for their monthly Speaker Evenings and AGMs for nearly 10 years.  In response to the gift, PBHSOBC promised that their doors will stay open to Mensa Pretoria for years to come.

April Speaker Evening

Our April speaker evening was very interesting. Titled "The rise of personal robotics", it gave us some insights into efforts to create a personal robot that are happening around the world.  According to Jonathan Claassens, our speaker, the time when each of us will have a robot to attend to our every need is still many years away. It seems like teaching a robot (or any artificial intelligence, for that matter) to do one thing, is easy.  But teaching it to behave like a human is hard.  It's like taking a baby and trying to teach it in a short time everything it needs to know in order to be an adult. Jonathan's words: "We will have automated cars before we have personal robots."

Jonathan Claassens is a roboticist who runs an automation and design company based in Centurion. He is also completing his PhD with Imperial College London on the topic of enabling a personal robot to cooperate with a user in completing a task.

Thank you Jonathan for a very insightful evening.

As with any Mensa Pretoria gathering, everyone had a great time at the Year Kick-Off braai.  Before the fires were lit there was plenty of time for conversation.  Some intellectual, some not!  Although some Mensans forgot their meat and drinks (some things are apparently too mundane for great minds...) the rest of us were more than willing to share. So with stomachs full of food and minds full of new ideas, Mensa Pretoria took off into the new year.  And it promises to be a great one! Join us for our next gathering to share in the fun.