NOTES ON PRESENTATIONS

If I was ever in doubt about the validity of the course of this project, my experiences as a juror earlier this week has erased all.

I wanted to gouge my eyes out I was so frustrated. I was frustrated by the LONG MEANDERING presentations, and drawings that don’t SAY anything.

The first person up droned on and on for seriously 15 minutes. I could not believe the professor did not try and rap things up. I was further infuriated by the discourse afterwards. The program was a restaurant based on ideas of PATTERN, and the first jury member to get up and talk started questioning whether the wine rack could “fit” where it was indicated on plan. I actually yelled at this woman a little saying I hope she really wasn’t going to waste everyone’s time talking about whether the wine rack was resolved.

Point of the story –be careful. You don’t want to be talking about the bathrooms or anything (you want them in there – the building, but don’t talk about them – that is unless…)

To this girl’s credit, it seemed that she had thought a lot of things out/through, but she went on to describe everything. The jury doesn’t have time to respond to everything, only a few things. YOU CHOOSE those few things.

But one of the important things about spending A LOT of time on producing clear presentations is that it allows the jury to be EFFICIENT with their time. If there is confusion through lack of clear presentation resulting in the jury talking about other things (a la – the wine rack.) this is inefficient and unhelpful. A clear presentation helps the jury HELP YOU.

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Additional comments to think about outside the context of this story to think about.

MAKE IT INTERESTING: in a make believe world, the jury pays full and equal attention to everyone. But this is the REAL WORLD. So make it interesting. This is simply done (in theory) by establishing a meaningful relationship between you/your project and “the audience.”

SPEAK SIMPLY AND CLEARLY: don’t be the cliché architect (or student) who tries to use complex words (or even made up words) to try and sound smart. Besides the JURY will include NON-ARCHITECTS. And this is an important point by the way – there will be NON-ARCHITECTS on the jury. They will be from related fields, but they will NON-ARCHITECTS (at least in the traditional sense). ALSO – this is a presentation you family should be able to understand.

FRAME: remember your presentation is the “frame” talk about things you want to talk about, and don’t talk about things you don’t.

PRACTICE PRACTIC PRACTICE: seriously, this is something that you need to practice a good bit for (or be verbally quick on your feet). But pair up in your practices so that you are not advancing the slides yourself. This is IMPORTANT when you practice, DO NOT be advancing the images yourself. If you do practice presenting by manually advancing your images as you practice, it will be a complete disaster in the real presentation and you are not the one advancing. Practice in front of your friends/family regardless of what they “do” their voice matters, just as yours.


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Watch other pecha kucha’s
Watch the video (and others) on how to give good presentations.

Be checking back in the blogs for more info from me. This is just one of multiple to come out of the pipe today (later).

Also, look through all blogs for comments I have made – there is A LOT of useful information embedded in the blogs. Spend some time sifting.