Tag: presentation

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A Matter of Presentation

It’s probably no surprise to regular readers that I’m not a full-time writer. Rather, my main income is from an office job. More accurately, I’m expected to be in the office for two days, with the other three at home.

While I’m at home, I like to listen to YouTube videos, particularly factual and educational ones. Since I started doing this, I’ve become more choosy about the types of videos I like and dislike.

For a start, I need audible narration rather than music and captions. I’ll be looking mainly at my work laptop and it’s not practical to turn to another screen every few seconds to find what I’ve missed. I also find it difficult to listen to synthesised narration; it has to be done by a person if they want my attention.

I have two particular go-to channels that fit this criteria. Firstly, I’ve long been a fan of Tom Scott, who’s now moved on from educational videos to focus on a gameshow called Lateral. Secondly is The Rest is Entertainment, where Richard Osman and Marina Hyde discuss show business, both in front of the camera and behind.

Next, while I don’t travel much in real life, I do it vicariously through channels such as Emma Cruises and Tips for Travellers, who prefer budget and luxury cruises respectively. Conversely, Ruth Aisling and Tom the Taxi Driver like to drive around, albeit in very different places. Jago Hazzard and Geoff Marshall travel on trains, whereas Mentour Pilot – that’s Mentour, not Mentor – talks through aircraft accidents in a way that doesn’t make you want to give up flying.

The connection between this list is that these creators know their subjects inside-out and present them clearly and factually. On the back of these, I’ve reasonably been shown suggestions for other similar channels, with mixed results.

Tom Scott indirectly led me to Wendover Productions who make 20-minute educational videos about all sorts of subjects, plus five-minute versions for smaller topics. On the other hand, watching Mentour Pilot routinely brings up 74 Gear. Both creators are equally qualified aviators, but 74 Gear tends to comment and respond to viral videos in an aggressive manner that I don’t relate to.

There is, however, one exception in the commentary genre, and that’s Gabi Belle, who does it with a lot of humour and insight. She also appears to be madly in love with Gordon Ramsay’s projects. It also took me a while to warm up to Pierogi and Kitboga who go after phone scammers, but I’ve learnt that both have had elderly relatives lose money this way and they don’t want anyone else to fall victim.

This is only a representative sample of my taste, but they all help the working day pass that little more enjoyably.

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Learning About Libraries

On Saturday, I attended a virtual conference with the unwieldy title Space and Sociability in Library and Information History.

I wouldn’t normally seek out such a conference, but there were two factors that encouraged me:

  1. It was run by someone I know, so I wanted to show support.
  2. It was supposed to be held hundreds of miles away, but was moved online at the last minute.

We heard a number of speakers talking about how libraries have been set up and used in different eras and cultures. One presentation talked about how the subscription model was once the dominant one, while another explained how the Austrian government would grant borrowing privileges to library users.

As well as learning something new, I was able to clean and tidy my kitchen at the same time.

What’s more, the pal who organised the event is shortly starting a prestigious library-based job in Edinburgh, so I’ll be able to see her in person and talk about these marvellous institutions far more often.

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Sprinting Like a Champion

Yesterday, I volunteered to take over one of the Twitter accounts for National Novel Writing Month for an hour. NaNoWordSprints provides nearly 50,000 subscribers with writing prompts and encouragement to reach their chosen goals.

When I first started writing, I went to classes with an author who would give us five or ten minutes to write a passage inspired by a snippet of text or a photograph, or occasionally an object.

My approach to this hour-long stint was similar, except that shorter prompts and longer writing periods seem to work better on Twitter. I’d thought about the prompt topics in advance, but the structure was constructed largely on-the-fly. In minutes, the four sessions were: 10, 15, 15 and five. The third of those had a photograph as a prompt instead of text.

On top of this, you need to keep an eye on any replies coming in, and answer accordingly if it was warranted. However, I found the pace manageable, and once I was in the swing of presenting the exercises, I enjoyed the experience so much that I signed up to take over on the three coming Mondays.

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The Inverted Bell Curve

Last week, Creative Dundee invited me to speak at their last-ever Make / Share event, on the subject of Impostor Syndrome.

Each participant is allowed up to 7 minutes and five slides. At my first rehearsal, I hit seven minutes by the time I’d reached my second slide, so I had to cut it down substantially for the final performance, which was captured on camera:

There’s always a question and answer session at the end, during which I was quite happy to inform the audience on a number of topics.

Afterwards, I stayed behind to speak with the other participants. Someone brought up the subject of how our presentations were done. One already had it written for another event, and simply adapted it for this one; another left it until the last minute.

I began to think about how I tackle my own projects, and I realise it follows an inverted bell curve:

The left-hand side of the curve represents my keenness for a new project when I first become involved in it, while the right-hand side represents my keenness when the deadline has nearly arrived. It’s not that I necessarily lose interest in the project during the dip, but there isn’t the same flurry of activity.

Of course, no project is quite as simple as this, but it’s a good generalisation of how I operate.

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Busy Bee

Last week, I learnt that the venue we use for Hotchpotch – the spoken-word open-mike night – will be closed for refurbishment until the end of August or the beginning of September.

By Texas State Archives from Austin, Texas, USA (2001078_009_70_132_002ac) [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons
By Texas State Archives from Austin, Texas, USA (2001078_009_70_132_002ac) [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons
You might remember three weeks ago, I spoke about the importance of keeping a kind of Cabinet office when there are difficult decisions to be made. The system definitely worked in this instance, with regular members making good suggestions about what to do next.

Within 24 hours, we’d managed to secure another bar in the city centre for this month, and potentially next. We even had an offer from another venue that we can investigate if we need to. The next Hotchpotch will now take place in the Westport Bar in Dundee on Monday 16 July at 7pm.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on my Make / Share presentation on the subject of impostor syndrome, as touched upon in last week’s entry. If you’re local to Dundee, this happens tomorrow at The Beer Kitchen from 7pm.

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Derailed

I mentioned last week I would be spending a lot of time on trains, thus giving me time to read.

File:Fraud.jpg
By Nick Youngson – http://www.nyphotographic.com/ Alpha Stock Images – http://alphastockimages.com/ – CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) – via Wikimedia Commons

When travelling by rail, it’s always prudent to expect delays. In this case, another train broke down near Penrith station and the passengers on mine were allowed onto the platform while the obstruction was cleared. This gave me time to finish one of my books, but I also needed to work on a presentation.

Every month, Creative Dundee holds an event called Make / Share. This is a night where people such as designers, artists, computer programmers, or anyone who creates something, are invited to speak about their work. The next event is on Tuesday 10 July and I’ve been asked to speak on the theme of impostor syndrome.

I’m not a lifelong fiction writer and certainly not a lifelong poet, and I’ve always been upfront about this. Even so, it’s difficult not to feel an outsider when you’re among people who’ve been creating fictional universes since they were in primary school. I’ll be telling the audience about five times I felt I didn’t belong on the writing scene.

I also mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, when I appeared on  The Beans Podcast. This is a weekly show compèred by my friends Valerie Mullen, Erin Farley and Sam Gonçalves. Like Make / Share, which Sam hosts, the podcast also invites creative people to give their story; indeed, it’s also worth listening to their previous episode about learning to like poetry.

But until the real writers figure out I’m one massive fraud, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing.