Most of the talks presented by the TBS are just precursors to the articles soon being published. TBS needs to define higher goals and attract speakers that can summarize larger scale trends and developments in fields of relevance to wider audiences in the New York metropolitan area. Talks should appeal to more than just a small specialized audience that is working on the same specialized topic as the speaker along with the friends, colleagues, and graduate students of the academic botanist speaker. The talks need to be broader in focus, broad enough to attract many different target audiences, not just fellow academic specialists. We have to commit ourselves to the importance of having goals that can be worked toward as a group.
Goals gives a common purpose.
It is a uniting experience. A society without important goals that are beyond the self-interests of the members, is like a person without higher moral guidelines. They do not know where they are going. Some may ask the question that if the Torrey Botanical Society is going through such tough times may be it is because local botanical societies are becoming obsolete. After all, to advance one's career, there are all the specialty journals and associations for that.