Sunday, March 6, 2011

Presentation Project

The best and most lasting growth comes when we move from our comfort zones. This presentation project was miles from mine. It made me understand how my mother felt when I gave her her first computer. I started the assignment excited because the project I chose was one that I wanted to do for a long time. The discomfort came from using tools that were very unfamiliar to me.

It my professional life, I spend all day long staring at a computer screen, but the time is spent writing queries or ddl or in ERwin designing databases. Even though I had designed hundreds of powerpoint presentations, I never used any of the fun frills like narration and slide timing or custom animation. With this assignment I used all of those and also stretched my creativity by learning a wireframe tool called MockFlow. The final step of the project, loading the presentation to the internet was a complete mystery to me. I am eternally grateful to the blog posters as I would never have figured it out without reading the posts.

I was reluctant to post my presentation for critique as it is a venture capital idea that I am actively pursuing (and you cannot copyright or patent an “idea”) however, self critiquing my presentation, I felt it had a very logical flow from idea to idea but that my transitions could have been smoother (both with my script and my narration tool). I shared information at a “30,000 foot” level as we say in IT. I felt that getting too technical would not hold the interest of venture capitalists.

As for anticipating questions, I did a high level idea presentation. It is my hope that there were unanswered process questions as I would hope to get to another meeting. The Purpose of the initial presentation was to spark interest in the idea. I also deliberately used minimal text and relied on narration. I felt that the photographs were the best way to get my point across about the diversity of choices and the need to be able to pare them down in a methodical manner.

While there are many things I will do differently in version 2 of this presentation, I feel I did a decent job of getting to the heart of my goal quickly and concisely. I am looking forward to refining this presentation and one day very soon presenting it to actual venture capitalists in a personal setting. I have a great deal of faith in this idea and I am fortunate to work with very talented developers and designers. I am going to bring this idea and this presentation to them and see if we can form the team to make this project a reality.

To view my Florida Staycation presentation, use the link :

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/tfortnash-874632-weekend-staycation/

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