Presentations
12/10/09
The presentations as a whole seem to be getting better every class period. I have commented after past presentation that it seemed like too many individuals are reading the information on their slides. That seems to be happening less and less. The majority of the presentations now use their PowerPoint's as a guide to the topics they are discussing.
Two presenters today are or were part of the organization they talked about, which is great, because it gives them a unique perspective on the issues discussed. However, neither one of them made it explicitly clear that they had been or are a part of the organization. It was a little confusing when half way through the presentations the presenters went from talking about their organization from an outside perspective to changing and talking about how they are involved. Simply by talking about how "we" communicated or what "we" could improve upon. This could have been easily avoided in both situations by mentioning at the beginning of the presentation how they are involved within the organization the decided to analysis.
David, I would agree that it seems as though that the presentations improved as the course progressed. I think this may be typical because those who present later in the course have an opportunity to see what is working and what seems to appear like an effective presentation. I have enjoyed how the presenters have improved in their ability to present without being completely reliant on every word on their slides. I saw this in the Twins presentations today. Both students who presented on the Minnesota Twins did a great job of sharing more information than was presented on their slides. This allowed for their presentations to be more engaging because they were sharing information that you could not simply read off the slides. I enjoyed hearing the contrast between the Twins presentations as well. What stuck out was the difference in the perception of the Twins organizational structure. The two presenters had different interpretations of what the Twins structure looked like, which shows the room for interpretation that comes with this kind of assignment.
I also agree that the presenters have been doing a much better job of simply using bullet-points on their slides and not reading information right off of the slides. I agree that it does make the presentation much more interesting when the individual has some personal experience with the organization they are analyzing. For example, the presentation about the Minneapolis refereeing association was very interesting because I knew the presenter had first-hand knowledge of how the organization worked. I also thought it was neat that she included a little information about how Kenny Mauer, a presenter we heard earlier in the course, still has a role within the organization. The presentations about the Minnesota Twins were interesting as well because even though much of their information was the same they presented it in a way that the audience still learned a few new things each time. Overall, the presentations today were very informative.
The presentations towards the end of the semester have been far more informative than those in the beginning because those towards the end, now know what to expect from the people that went earlier. It is easy for them to see what to change and what to make better for their presentations. It is not a very effective presentation when people read off the slides instead of engaging the audience while presenting. The presentations are very informative of the knowledge that we have learned in this class from the book and from the blogs that we have had to do. It is good to see how people dissected each organization to find the different parts that we learned about.