One of the things that I’ve always found challenging (and unfortunately just as challenging to teach) is how you should end a speech. A lot of variables and styles play a part here. Pacing to slow down your speech and end with a final thought is one good way to conclude. Most often, people will anticipate your conclusion if you say, “In conclusion…” and then recap your main points. However, I also taught one recently that seems to be a presentation-killer: “Does anyone have any questions?”
Too many presentations end without a grand finale. Some wander off-topic with a closing statement that has nothing to do with the content of the presentation. And quite a few end with these stinkers:
Wimpy. “I see my time is up. Thank you and goodnight.”
Honestly, I’m guilty of this. I never renewed my antivirus subscription, so I get three or four messages from McAfee telling me that my Security Center is not configured properly or something. And honestly, I wish I could turn it off, but I think the only way to do it is to fork over the $50. Hooray.
In a given day, or week, or month, how many messages pop up on your computer to:
Update Java, RealPlayer, or Windows?
Connect to a wireless network?
Remind you of an upcoming meeting or birthday?
Keep you up to date on your subscribed RSS feeds?
Warning: Some of these pop-ups may appear while you’re presenting in slide show view! Not a pretty picture!
After a few minutes of inactivity (let’s say you’re answering questions), does your screen saver kick in, or does your computer go into hibernation mode?
Before you get into such a situation, right now, start making a list of the pop-ups that you see, and research how to turn them off. It’s not always easy to find the answer, because the software companies want you to see those pop-ups!
I’ve heard of even more embarrassing situations that pop-ups have created. For example, I was at a conference where they told a story of a pastor that had pornographic pop-ups on his computer because he had downloaded some spyware off a pornographic web site he had visited. Instant messengers are also annoying (both in pop-ups and in their “alerts”) sometimes if you forget to turn them off.
Anyway, if you know how to turn off the pop-ups, it might behoove you to do so.
I don’t know if society has even been so concerned about staying “connected” as we are now. My wife used to work in the closing department of a local home builder, and she had to carry a Blackberry and a Nextel with her after hours in case somebody’s closing fell apart at the table and the title company or the customer needed to contact her. Between 5 PM and 8 PM every night, I would hear that thing go off and swear someday that I would pitch it out the window.
Well, now that I’m an adjunct and most students contact me through e-mail, I am the one now who is constantly obsessed with whether or not there are any wi-fi hotspots wherever we go so that I can stay connected with students. For the most part, none of you ever email me anyway, so you either don’t have questions or clearly don’t need to talk to me as much as I seem to need to talk to you. It’s fortunate when I take the family to Panera Bread for dinner that I have access, because after I take 5 minutes to check my e-mail and find out there are no new messages, I spend about 30 minutes on Yahoo! Games.
Whether or not you need to stay connected to your cell phone or your e-mail, we can never forget that we have an eternal connection with God, which is Christ Jesus. You don’t have to check for the location of a hotspot ahead of time to contact Him. You don’t have to check how many bars you have, worry about the signal strength, or check how close you are to a cell tower to reach Him. You don’t have to worry how many minutes you have remaining or how much battery life you have left to keep the connection going. He is there for you 24/7, without a break, on nights, weekends, and Federal holidays. That’s a better connection than you can get with any help desk, cell phone, or laptop on Earth.
This is probably a strange topic of discussion, but “bad PowerPoint” has become somewhat of a hobby of mine. I attended the Midwest Scholars Conference over the winter, and I discovered there that my classroom PowerPoint slides were bad, and not bad in the good way either. I have since tried to reformat my slides into something a little less “bad”, but it is difficult to keep from bulleted lists, which are apparently a no-no because they get too wordy. The problem for me is that I look at bulleted lists and notice that they look clean and organize, but they apparently don’t facilitate learning very well.
Anyway, I think the last example on this page about the components of a presentation may finally break my overuse of the bulleted list. Perhaps while I have these few months off this summer, I may be able to utilize some of these concepts in my hundreds of slides containing bulleted lists. We’ll see. However, if you are planning on putting together a presentation for class, there are plenty of ideas and references on Ellen Finkelstein’s page you can use. I’ll try to get some more up here as they become available.
My daughter was watching Veggie Tales yesterday, and the episode was “Larry-Boy and the Rumor Weed”. In the show, Bumblyburg’s favorite superhero Larry-Boy has to fight off a gigantic weed growing under the city that is feeding off the negative things being said about his butler, Mr. Alfred. After talking to Junior Asparagus and Laura’s elementary school class, he mentioned that he had to go home to “recharge his batteries”.
The kids didn’t understand what that meant, so they assumed it meant that Mr. Alfred was a robot. They told the “rumor weed”, who resembled a cross between Audrey II and a housewife from Queens, which in turn told everyone in town that Alfred had robot laser eye beams and was ready to take over the world. When Junior and Laura discover that they did wrong, the town talks about all the good things that Alfred had done for everyone, and the weed turns into a flower.
If only we did the same whenever people talk poorly of others. I know that I have spoken quite frequently in classes about the lesson from James 3:6 that the tongue is a fire. However, I think we often forget that when we start a fire and have to put it out, we must rebuild the soil and replant seeds to get things growing again. We don’t just put out the fire and walk away.
I hate being in meetings where someone not in the room will be talked about disparagingly, whether or not I agree, and I hate even worse when I don’t defend that person out of fear of reprisal or loss of status. It seems like it happens quite frequently in the business world, and what I think people don’t realize is that when they engage in that type of behavior, it reflects poorly on them. Would you trust someone who is just as likely to stab you in the back when you’re not looking by spreading rumors or talking about you with others? As Christians, I think we are called to be more dignified when we speak, not to spread this so-called “trash talk”, and not to engage in these back-biting behaviors.
In previous posts, I’ve discussed how Chick-Fil-A and other businesses use their Christian faith to draw in customers. After all, a good testimony as a trusted servant is a good reputation to have in business.
However, here are four different accounts about how a car dealership in California advertised on the radio to non-Christians: they told non-Christians to “sit down and shut up.”
One of the aspects that we haven’t discussed as much in class are the functional reasons for communication. In this article from Fortune magazine, the former CEOs of JetBlue, Starbucks, and Motorola explain how the lack of communication was instrumental to them becoming unemployed.
David Neeleman (formerly of JetBlue Airlines): I didn’t have time to update the board on everything. If you don’t, somebody else will. You have to be able to give them an accurate picture of what’s going on, or they develop their own perceptions and start creating their own stories. And then they make their decisions. How do you keep these people up to date and give them the whole picture? That’s the job of the CEO, and I failed.
Jim Donald (formerly of Starbucks): I made it a habit of every other week updating the board through an e-mail on revenue, any store openings, any issues around the world.
Neeleman: When things start going south, communication should increase. Even if you think you’re doing enough, you’re not doing enough. I didn’t do a good enough job because [board members] developed their own perceptions of where things were headed.
It’s an interesting read, both from a communications perspective and from a management perspective.
As you all begin preparing for your final team presentations next week, I thought this slide show might be helpful to you. There are probably 10,000 people on the internet with their own ideas of how to put together a PowerPoint presentation, but this is one of the few I have found that integrates the delivery and communication aspects of the presentation equally with the technological aspects.
Again, I was very pleased with the quality of speeches last night. I saw improvement in everyone from the first night, and I thoroughly enjoy hearing about everyone’s interests and personal causes (whether everyone agrees with them or not). I think such diversity in the classroom environment keeps things interesting, and there were definitely some lively Q&A sessions after many of our speeches. I’m looking forward to the personal aspects you will each bring to this week’s Faith Integration papers and speeches.
Next week, I’m looking for some specific feedback related to the team teaching assignments. I’ve been collecting some of your feedback so far to pass along to the school along with my personal feedback, and you will have the chance to share it again in your end-of-course surveys. Please think about the last two weeks of class over the coming week so you will be able to answer the questions. I have a feeling I already know the answers, but I don’t want to second guess anyone.
Below is the PowerPoint that I use for the reading assignments for Workshop 3. Again, because last night was a team teaching event, you didn’t see these, but these are what I feel are the core concepts that are essential to get out of the reading. Hopefully, we will have time in the next two weeks to follow up where necessary.
One of the mass media that I think your textbook ignores is video gaming. In terms of revenue generated, video game hardware and software is a multi-billion dollar industry that stands right up there with the motion picture and television entertainment industries. It fits as one of the mass media by definition, because the software is the same no matter where it is purchased geographically, and it is meant to be consumed by a large, diverse audience. In fact, on the subject, DVDs and video downloads would also fit into this category.
When the video game Grand Theft Auto IV was released earlier this month, there were concerns that it would actually cut into movie revenues of the key male 18-29 demographic, because players would stay at home to play the game. This mirrors the same concerns over lost work productivity when other video game releases such as the Halo and Madden NFL franchises coincided with “sick days”. The game ended up generating $310 million of revenue in first-day sales and $500 million in first-week sales. The link has some other interesting details about the game.
As a communication medium, gamers can go online via the internet and play a character in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) or create a virtual character to live in a virtual world such as Second Life. If you’re unfamiliar with either of those terms, Google them or ask your kids. Either they or their friends are probably playing them. People befriend other players through the game, communicate with each other, go out on missions together, or in the case of Second Life, open businesses and engage in transactions together.
There are also negative arguments against the violence and morals of some of these games and how they influence children. The industry uses a ratings system, but it is not always enforced and parents that buy the games don’t always pay attention. So, video games often come under the same scrutiny as television violence, and perhaps even more so, because in violent video games you feel like you are actually engaging in some of those activities. Here is an interesting excerpt from a blog on Wired.com:
