Newspeak Presentations

The Newspeak Presentations were a creative and interesting way to have presentations without the crutch of PowerPoint. It was interesting to watch people do presentations without being able to just read a bulleted list and it made me realize just how hard it is to organize presentations in the absence of PowerPoint. Some people were creative and managed to have some interaction with the audience while simultaneously illustrating the point of their word, but others basically had PowerPoint-lite where they just read a script off a piece of paper. Another interesting thing to note was that nobody hit the time limit, including myself, and most presentations fell into the 1-2min time slot rather than the 4-6minutes Alex had hoped for. Some people got really creative about their word (handupdontcare and virjective for instance) while basically everyone else just mashed together a couple words and hoped for the best.
I liked this assignment, but it had much to teach me about presenting without PowerPoint and the idea that I could write a few things down on a note card and have that carry me the full 5 minutes. I've always thought of myself as a good presenter, but really that should be qualified as being a good PowerPoint presenter. While I am under no uncertainty that my grade on this presentation was poor, I do like to know my faults and this presentation brought this particular failing to the surface.

Markel Chapter 21 - Oral Presentations

Markel Chapter 21 seems shoehorned in compared to the rest of the book. A very short chapter (clocking in at around 15 pages minus the graphics), the writer goes into brief detail on creating a presentation. It's funny that he acknowledges how reliant people have become on PowerPoint to give presentations and then spends most of the chapter dealing with graphics and PowerPoint slides. In hindsight I wish I would have paid more attention to the Calming Your Nerves section of the chapter because I was so nervous going into the presentation (which is odd because I usually enjoy presenting). The chapter also would have benefited from having a list or section that outlined what should be in a presentation.
For instance, when I've done technical presentations on a piece of equipment I followed a typical outline like this:

• Intro/Discussion of Problem
• Technical Background
• Similar Devices/Solutions (If applicable)
• Research/Evaluation Methods
• Conclusions/Comparisons to Similar Devices/Solutions
• Recommendations
• Summary 

This chapter would have greatly benefited from something like that (especially considering that he has a whole section on making designs in PowerPoint). On an unrelated note that slide with Darth Vader is pretty funny.

Markel - Chapters 16 and 19

Reading Markel after taking classes that require technical writing is like taking a time machine to see all the stuff I did wrong as I lurched through my upper-division classes. Even basic stuff like knowing the difference between an abstract and a letter of transmittal had to be learned through doing. Basically the Markel readings reminded me why it's absurd to not have English 402 as a requirement for the engineering design courses, as technical writing comprises a majority of the work. Obviously this reading wasn't a page-turner like 1984 but I appreciate that Markel spruces things up with figures and examples. Also the checklist on page 535 seems pretty handy. As an engineer, technical writing like proposals and recommendations are a large part of my work. In my internship I'd say that it is already about 40% of the work that I do on any given day, and I see no reason why that would decrease as I gain responsibility. For instance, I've written a technical instruction manual on the operation of several pieces of equipment and am currently working on a project that involves a significant amount of technical writing (I don't know if I can say specifically what it is due to NDA). Thus the recommendation chapter seemed really relevant to me (I've only written a couple proposals and those were for class).