This won’t be a post about the wonderful sessions I attended at the OLA Superconference 2011, because I didn’t really attend any. I couldn’t find the time! Rather, this will be some reflections on being a presenter, twice.

1. Try something different. For one of my presentations (on active learning classrooms), my co-presenter and I used a web program called Prezi instead of a slide-deck (PPT, Keynote). It was the first time I’ve ever used it, and it was actually pretty fun. If it was both of us trying to use it for the first time, I wouldn’t have made a conference presentation our breakout event, but since it was just me that was inexperienced, it worked out well. Looking at how we used Prezi, it was really just flash and novelty, but that’s just fine for a first-time. You can’t expect that your first time doing anything will be a revelation, and you shouldn’t expect mastery the first time you use a tool. Now that I see what it can do, I can figure out ways to use it to full effect, particularly in showing connections between ideas and concepts.
2. Get creative. This can be considered in conjunction with point one, above. For the same presentation, I shot and edited my first video, ever. It didn’t have the highest production values, but that didn’t matter: it was far more interesting to watch compared me talking for five minutes. Just like all the best active learning approaches, it also took much more time and thought a priori. But now that I’ve done it, I have a better sense of how to do similar things next time, and how to make it better. Creativity breeds creativity.
3. Meet your audience. I wish I could have done more of it, but I managed to hang out in the audience a bit before my talk. I wanted to know why they were there. That may sound odd, but I was curious where they were coming from, and if that matched our conception of what the presentation was about. I’ve been in countless presentations where I came for one reason (based upon what I read in the title or abstract), and the presentation was about another thing entirely. I wish there was more time to engage the audience this way. Maybe I should build a few minutes into the beginning of the presentation to find out.
4. Listen to feedback, if you can get it. We were quite fortunate in my other presentation (on models of embedded librarianship) to hear from people afterward about what worked and what didn’t. In fact, there was some brief discussion during the question period which indicated some frustration with the broad question we were asking. Because we know we will have another chance to do this presentation, that kind of feedback is incredibly constructive. Most presentations could benefit from a tweak (or more!). Ours is no different.
5. Bring ‘business’ cards. I don’t know what it is with me, but I forget those things at every conference. Nonetheless, I am making a point of following up with every business card I get. I would hope for the same if it were the other way around. It’s like the golden rule of contact exchanging.
6. I don’t really like conferences. It’s quite possible that I’m doing it wrong, or it’s the introvert in me speaking, but I find conferences (of any kind) draining and stressful. Whether I am presenting or just attending. I can’t really do more than two days of conferencing. I’ll need to figure out what the trick to being an expert conference-goer is.

I’m almost embarrassed to post this video here, but as an (honest) record of my professional life, even the silly stuff should be laid bare. Arr!