For Your Consideration

For this hypothetical presentation, I imagined my audience would be a public library board. Since that is not an audience that I have ever interacted with before, I did feel a bit out of my depth while creating the presentation. I think it would have been easier if I was creating this presentation for real, because having to do a lot of leg work imaging the situation was difficult and felt more laborious than a presentation with more tangible context. The one thing that did help was that I do genuinely think makerspaces are a good idea and like the idea of having one aimed towards teens. Many makerspaces I have seen in public libraries seem to lean more towards adults with different unique technology that adults may be interested in to complete a task, like digitizing old tapes, but are probably not as interesting to teens. As a person that likes crafts myself and knows how expensive getting a variety of supplies can be if I am interested in a new hobby, I like the idea of low tech makerspaces that focus more on creativity and removing the barriers of the cost of a breadth of supplies, instead of just expensive machinery. 

I feel fortunate that, unlike many people, I do not have a fear of presenting and really don't mind it. I have done many times as both a student and teaching assistant, and even took a public speaking class during undergrad. That's not necessarily to say that I enjoy presenting, but I don't mind it. I'm used to being conversational when giving presentations and not reading off slides verbatim, so not including all the information on the slides was not unfamiliar to me. Although I typically include a bit more information that I did since I, as an audience member, sometimes get distracted and seeing visual information along with auditory can help keep my brain present.  

 

Despite my lack of experience presenting in this way (to a group of superiors and trying to convince them of something), I think it is probably important to practice because I am sure I will find myself in situations where I am advocating for something that I think is important on behalf of the community I'm serving.