scribble, scribble, scribble…

…and now I am relaxing with a cup of decaf. I am going to tentatively deem my presentation a success, as I received a number of compliments and have retained all of my limbs.

Last night I was concerned that I wouldn’t have enough material to fill the allotted time; as it turned out, I ran a few minutes over. I did my best to acknowledge it, though, and to hurry up and finish, so I hope no one was terribly upset.

If I had to do it over, I would spend a bit more time explaining what I wanted to talk about and introducing myself professionally. I’m afraid that in my eagerness to get to the content, I might not have made it 100 percent clear that the point of the content was to help businesspeople pitch themselves and their businesses as interesting subjects for newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio stations to cover. And I rushed through my own qualifications and background (although I don’t really think I needed to dwell on them, as long as what I had to say spoke for itself).

The other thing I would change is kinda funny: Before the meeting started, I told another MABC member it was my first time using PowerPoint and that the only thing I didn’t want to do was just read verbatim everything on the slide show, because isn’t that just the worst, when all you’re doing is saying aloud what a roomful of perfectly literate adults can read and comprehend for themselves? Naturally, I then proceeded to read much of the slide show verbatim. It’s very hard not to! I believe I provided some added value with my presence. Certainly the questions and input from other members were really fantastic. (On that note, many people chimed in with useful info, but Diana Mahaffey specifically mentioned Help a Reporter Out, a resource I’m linking to here and in the previous post.)