Thing 20: Presentations

This is a presentation which I gave in 2013. I'm fortunate that the HSLG committee have it up on Slildeshare. http://www.slideshare.net/hslgcommittee/community-based-bookclubs-grace-hillis-hslg-conference-2013

In reality, I didn't use these slides on the day. Instead I only used 4 slides and they would not have been suitable for sharing online as they were only to supplement me telling the story.

I am fortunate to have a friend who both worked in HR and is a positive psychologist. She knows all about giving a good presentation. She helped me turn my fairly boring and mediocre presentation into one I am proud of.

Instead of talking at the audience she really got me to engage with them. The presentation was a lightening one (5 minutes) at the HSLG annual conference. It was about a book club for people with intellectual disability that took place in community locations such as cafes. So how my friend got me to start was by asking who in the audience is in a book club. I then described possible difficulties for people with intellectual disability to be in such a club. This, hopefully, helped the audience connect with the topic. I gave examples of how specific individuals (my friend really emphasised the need for me to do this - to personalise it) benefited from participating in the club, and I demonstrated a piece of assistive technology used by some of the members. Please note that I was very conscious of protecting the identities of the book club members and so was careful about what I said.

One librarian who was a student at the time praised the presentation in her student blog. I was so happy when I accidentally came across it online.

I was comfortable with my topic and I had practiced my speech with a good friend and I was pleased with my delivery on the day. Actually, I arrived late to the conference because the "talking pen" prop needed new batteries and the maintenance team in work helped me out. I would advise people to ensure any props are working before the day of the event! And while it wasn't nice to be told my presentation needed to be changed a lot it did pay off in the end.