From bits & pieces of the previous comments:
Passionate, like a Baptist Minister on fire for God (or for surveying in this case).
That's the style he uses. Loud, engaged, rather theatrical, and all-in. He often engages the audience. You can't sleep through one of his presentations as long as you have a pulse.
For some people, the style of delivery is too distracting or too offensive to their senses to get much out of the material presented. If that's you, there are others who convey the same basic messages at a fairly lesser decible level.
I enjoy Jeff's enthusiasm for the topics he presents.
Did you learn anything?
Yes. As Snoop said, a lot of it is bringing a different perspective than most surveyors are used to looking at. If you aren't very aware of how survey practice translates to how the courts view the evidence surveyors work with, and if you aren't completely entrenched in the engineering view of surveying (the view that places dimensions above monuments, and holds that surveyors do not interpret intent, just the facts ma'am), then you will learn a lot and possibly be shocked at some of what you learn. If you pay attention, you'll learn that surveyors didn't invent their own rules, the courts gave them to us.
If you are entrenched in the engineering view of surveying, if you are certain that survey rules have very little to do with case law and that judges just make it up on the fly or flip a coin because they don't know or understand survey rules, if you are rock-solid certain that the deed is the only place where you can ever look for intent and that if the deed calls for 100.00' between monuments and you measure 99.94', at least one of those monuments is wrong, then you won't learn a darned thing and you shouldn't waste your money on one of Jeff's seminars. Instead, you should waste your money on learning how to run the newest, coolest equipment so that you can make even more precise measurements to the wrong points.
If, on the other hand, you want a better understanding of the basis for the survey rules you've picked up along the way, sign up, show up and listen.
He's like a motivational speaker.
Not so much. Motivational speakers largely deal in platitudes designed to make the audience feel good about themselves so that they can go about spreading a good attitude in a world of grumpiness and failure. But they don't often give you a solid factual basis for their message of how great you are. Jeff is more like a fire 'n brimstone preacher. If you receive the message, that's great. But if you don't, you risk the damnation of the courts and the financial liability that goes with it. As the preacher holds up the Word of God as his authoritative reference, Jeff holds up the word of the courts (published cases) in which they interpret the law and define the legal doctrines for us.
On one hand he's preaching the potential judgment and damnation you will feel if your surveying sins are laid bare in court, while on the other proclaiming the freedom from the eternal torment of having your future sins published forever in a ruling. All you have to do is accept the truth that surveys should be conducted in a manner that gives the same consideration to the evidence that the court must by its rules, and then go forth and sin no more.
I don't agree with 100% of what he says.
Well gosh, I don't get it. I thought all knowledgable surveyors agreed on everything.
OK, sarcasm off. I haven't met anyone that I agree with 100% of the time. Heck, I argue with myself from time to time (so far, I've won every such argument, but the law of averages says that I will lose an argument to me sooner or later).
That's a statement that usually gets tossed about when someone does agree with a good deal, or even most of what the subject person (Jeff Lucas in this case) expounds on. But the maker of the statement is trying to maintain some philosophical distance from the controversial figure lest they be categorized with the figure and have some of that dirty, nasty controversy splash onto them.
So, for the record, I disagree with each of you about something. I disagree with some of you about a lot of things. But on those things we agree on, I'm glad we find common ground. If it's controversial, I'll put my field clothes on and let the controversy splash and fly about. Most of it washes off.
Well said sir.