The Biggest Presentation of My Life

If you've been reading, you know it's been a busy few weeks after teaching two Enriching Scholarship sessions last week, and preparing for what I'm calling the biggest presentation of my life this past Tuesday.  Oh, and there's the MLA Technology and Trends Conference presentation tomorrow.

But, this week's post will focus on the biggest presentation of my life.  The presentation was the culmination of my 18-month internship experience at the University of Michigan Library as the University Library Associate in the Knowledge Navigation Center.  More specifically, the 15-minute presentation discussed my second year project at the Detroit Center where I helped set up meetings, created a Library Research Guide, and laid the groundwork for the collaborative initiative between the UM Library and the Detroit Center.

I have never worked so hard on a presentation.  To be honest, for most class presentations, I'd outline my presentation in a Google Doc, then copy, paste and edit the text into PowerPoint.  I'd maybe add an image or two, but then I'd read it over, practice maybe once, and give a decent presentation.  However, since this was what I considered to be the biggest presentation of my life, I did quite a bit more work, and I think it paid off.

First, I worked to find images that represented my ideas so that I could decrease the amount of text, or remove it all together.  This was both fun and meaningful, as I realized that a picture can be worth 1000 words, and that the words were more beneficial to my remembering what to say, than to the audience.  Consequently, I realized that if I practiced enough, I didn't need the words on the screen to remind me what to say.  What a revelation that was....

Secondly, I practiced.  I practiced alone, in front of others -- edited -- alone again -- edited -- one-on-one -- edited -- and then had my supervisor review my presentation -- and edited again.  Lots and lots of reviewing, tweaking, editing.  And I was still nervous!  I had notes printed below my slides, but.... when I got in front of the 60+ library staff members, I found I knew what I was talking about.  Not only did I work on the project for 15 or so weeks (and thus, knew what I'd done) but the countless hours I put into the presentation had caused me to know my stuff.  Nervous at first, I found that by the end of the short presentation and during the Q & A, I was comfortable speaking and answering questions from the audience.

It was a great lesson learned that putting the greatest amount of work into the biggest presentation of my life was a good idea.  And I learned that its much more fun for me, and constructive to the audience, if I add images and edit both the ideas and structure of the presentation.  Finally, and this lesson - no matter how many times I learn it - is most important to me... the work is never done and I can always improve what I'm doing.  And that is relevant for anything.

You can check out the presentation here, on my website (it's the first bullet).