Jane Goodall of the Jane Goodall Institute has just completed her keynote speech. It was quite amazing to hear this woman speak, she's had such an impact on the world's understanding of primates and social causes in third world nations.

The discussion didn't touch too much on coffee, but it popped in here and there. At one point, she talked about her "Take Care" program and how in some communities they are helping the villagers to start growing crops, some of them coffee. She mentioned that the Fosse Foundation has their Gorilla Safe coffee branding, and she made a plea to the huge gathering for something similar for the chimpanzees.

Mostly, Goodall discussed her programs and gave many annecdotes about how the social behaviours of chimps are very similar to humans. She stressed a point that one difference really exists: humans can communicate, verbally, in writing, and electronically. And while we could be using this skill to be great stewards for the earth, instead we're using it to be great destroyers. It's so true.

The room was packed. I am bad at estimating numbers, but I would guess there was at least 1000 people.

I have some rather crappy audio from the lecture (hey, it's my cell phone's audio recorder!). Apologies for the quality, but if you'd like to hear Goodall talk, here's a 1.2mb wav file of her. Enjoy!