presentations

I enjoyed today's class of presentations. I watched and listened for both content and style so I learned about ideas relevant to public health communication and effective presentations. Anh's fabulous presentation stuck with me and I want to purchase the book (Presentation Zen: Simple ideas on presentation design & delivery by Garr Reynolds). Since we ran out of time in class and I will have to present at a later date (next week?), I will probably go back through my slides and remove a few extra words because even though I felt like I was using restraint I could probably improve upon them further. Anh was right about simplicity in slides making the presenter's job more difficult. In the past I have relied too heavily on my slide content to do the talking for me.

Also the idea of telling a story resonated with me. It's a feature of many of the more memorable talks I've heard and I intend to incorporate it into my presentation. One thing I noticed was largely lacking was the use of humor--maybe it's too difficult or takes more practice? Does one have to be naturally funny to pull this off? Cody showed a funny clip, which definitely help keep me engaged. Her illustration of "world wide rave" marketing strategy of providing special opportunity for super-fans to meet with J.K. Rowlings about the next Harry Potter book was also memorable.

One thing I would have liked to see more public health examples, as it can be somewhat of a stretch to imagine health communications generating the same buzz as, say, Harry Potter. That said, some of these ideas have never been tried with health campaigns and I'm glad to have been exposed. I loved these website examples in Izzybeth's presentation: sexreally.com/ and www.thatsnotcool.com/. This video is cute and gets to a common relationship problem with teens--too many texts!



I was a bit troubled by how the digital harassment issues on this site were gendered (http://www.thatsnotcool.com/VideoIndex.aspx). Text Monsters were both female culprits with male victims, Pressure Pic Problem was instigated by boys asking for nude photos of girls, and The Break-In scenarios both involved boys hacking into girls online accounts. It's important to be mindful of potentially unintended or harmful "hidden" messages included in health communications.