22/03/11

Today I delivered a presentation to the dissertation research conference at college. The need to do this had taken me somewhat by surprise as I had thought that the conference was not until the following week, which yet again highlights my need to be more organised. Therefore, the presentation was hastily put together this morning and last night. Although it was written in a not particularly academic fashion, I was relieved to find that I had enough to say about my dissertation that I was able to write almost 2,600 words on the subject in that short space of time, all of which I feel showed a good working knowledge of my chosen subject. However, I was unable to practice my delivery in conjunction with the power point I had pulled together due to printer malfunction and during my delivery I stumbled through slides. Again, this shows that preparation is the key. I also relied a lot on the written words in front of me. I think that this is partly due to lack of preparation but also due to fear of ‘corpsing’ in front of an audience. For someone who always has a lot to say I always feel that when put on the spot I have a tendency to waffle. I feel that delivery of presentations is an area I really would like to concentrate on in future and an extremely worthwhile point of development not just academically but personally as well. I particularly enjoyed a BA4 student’s presentation on Taiko drumming. It is not a subject that I knew much (if anything) about or something I would have thought on the surface to be of interest to me but the student made his presentation conversational and informative and came across as very knowledgeable, as though he had completely immersed himself in every aspect of his topic. It was apparent that the subject was something he was extremely interested in and an activity he personally participated in himself and I am aware that this may not always be the case for the speaker when delivering a presentation. However, this conversational and enthusiastic style is something I would like to attempt to deliver my own presentations and public addresses in.