Guest Speaker

It was nice to change things up this week and have a guest speak. Rob was so well spoken, eloquent and passionate about this job that it really inspired me to look into the camp he mentioned to Monica, as well as other volunteering opportunities.

I also think that Rob was a great example of what we are trying to learn in this class: communicating. In terms of presenting to a group, he told a story, he knew his material forwards and backwards so he didn't need to refer to notes or stumble through memorized slides, and he was able to just speak to us. This was way more engaging than if he had shown up a power point presentation. Of course, there are some cases when we will need power points for whatever it is that we are doing but it was a nice example of what else can be done.

Rob also shared some great experiences and knowledge about public relations and how to get your message across to a population. Like he said, word of mouth is probably one of the most powerful tools in our shed (so to say...) but this requires saturating a market. People need to know of your "thing" as an option. I don't 100% agree though with the idea that it is word of mouth that sells and not advertising, particularly when you look at certain populations. I can distinctly remember my younger brother, my peers, and even myself being 100% influenced by ads. Just food for thought...

I really liked Feion's presentation. But as stated before, why weren't these assigned readings or presentations that we held sooner? While I understand needing to read the other texts (since we are public health and what not), if we are in this class to try and improve our communication skills, maybe the practical readings about how to present/communicate should come earlier. It's a bit embarrassing to present and then be told how to do it more efficiently. I know that Sheila graciously stepped into the class so that it could be offered and is working off of what was used before so maybe next time around she'll move some of the extra credit onto required reading list (segments, of course! No one would read a whole book about presenting) or change when extra credit presentations re: presenting happens.

I'm glad we were able to move forward on our own ads. I think our re-segmenting really worked well and that we've got some great ideas for ads. With what I am struggling, though, is what channels we should use. Guess we'll discuss next week!