Comments on: I went to Internet Librarian and it was OK

By: Iris

Iris — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:12:47 +0000

Elizabeth, I second Steve’s assessment. Your presentation was the highlight of Monday’s presentations for me. Interesting stuff!! And you didn’t seem all that nervous to me.

By: Elizabeth Edwards

Elizabeth Edwards — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:57:53 +0000

Thanks for the positive feedback on my presentation! I appreciate the blog props. I struggle with presentations because I have terrible stage fright and a tendency to talk too fast if I go off topic (please, no one pick me for VP), so I’ve tried to strike a balance between things I hate (people reading their bullet points) and things I’m too nervous to do (go without notes, say).

Note: Elizabeth said she had trouble posting this comment, so I’m posting it for her. If anyone else has trouble commenting here, please let me know. -Steve

By: Chadwick

Chadwick — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:34:57 +0000

Steve,
you make many good points here. I struggle with different types of presentations in a variety of formats.

The ones I do most regularly are very technical, in a training setting, and require so much vendor jargon and esoteric transmission of table configuration settings (ALEPH) that I have basically given up trying to make them dynamic. For a 5 hour class, the best I can do to cut the deadly tedium is resort to using corny tech humor and images made with image generators. You just can’t make tab16.eng inspiring.

On the other hand, I did a Pecha Kucha recently and found it to be a lot of fun, but still time consuming to prepare. If you aren’t talking about a topic in general terms from memory, and if you use lots of quotes, as mine did, it is fairly tough to memorize.

I almost killed myself last year making a presentation for a post-conference workshop at CIL. Coming up with original content for a 3 hour session can be difficult. I did better with that one, but still fell into training mode. I do think that picking appropriate images for your concepts helps with this.

I’ve seen a lot of good presenters and my share of bad ones. I think programmers and coders are the worst, for the reasons I mention above. It’s hard to talk about really technical coding issues and cut the dull factor at the same time.

The content for presentations usually given at ITI conferences should lend itself to evocative, engaging presentations, but I think that we get in a habit of presenting information as “training” rather than in an informative and inspiring manner.

There is a way to include practical information in an engaging format, but the path is narrow and few travel it. I’m still stumbling along the way myself. :-)

By: aaron schmidt

aaron schmidt — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 02:37:56 +0000

I’ll totally second or third the notion that my list was for a *certain type* of presentation. Having come right off of IL I was focused on *that* type of presentation (a 20-40 minute session in a big room). Even that might be too broad of a stroke. Surely there are other ways to do it and factors that I didn’t include.

I’m not a fan of giving “here are these neat tools” presentations, but many times people tell me the ones I give are useful to them. I tried to include as many stories as I could in the outreach prez the LiB and I gave.

I’ve found presentations like these to be useful in the past, but not so much recently. Usually out of the lot there are only two or three that pique my interest. I guess I’d rather skim a list of links in a blog post if there’s not going to be any case study discussed.

Now to read your other links, including queuing up even more TED talks!