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.