Presentation
I have never been terribly good at public speaking or presenting information even in a private setting. Always relegating that task to others both professionally and privately. This would have probably not have changed had I not restarted my academic career.
Ignite Talk
In the writing section I described how it is important to know the audience and your stakeholders while developing a product or strategy and this principle remains the same when crafting a speech. With those principles in mind I went about crafting slides and developing a script to make the act of presenting a little less daunting on myself. However, when it finally came time to record myself to submit the assignment I think I had to redo the entire session like 5 to 6 different times before I was finally satisfied with what I had recorded. The final product itself didn't sound like my script at all as I eventually got comfortable with the content enough to just adlib most of it with minor prompts using keywords.
Video Presentation
Taking what I learned in my ignite talk presentation I began with developing an overall narrative I was going to be comfortable with speaking to. This was made easier as I now knew I was better at presenting the information to an audience when I am NOT reciting the information off from a script. With that in mind I developed slides in such a way that they would help me key in on when and how long I should speak to a topic by either adding transitions that move into the screen at opportune times or by moving onto the next slide. With all this down I was also able to focus more on speaking to the audience and projecting my presence rather than being more reserved while reading off the script. Overall, this was possibly one of the first times I have ever enjoyed presenting anything to a public setting.