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Stuff that may be relevant for the Digital Media programme in Bremen.

presentations and the life long learning process

· Katja Langeland · in Art Design Theory
2 things come up in our studies very often, which I want to emphasize here today: presentations and learning. PRESENTATIONS: There are two people, I want to introduce you to and whom you should look at and take into consideration whenever you do presentations and visualizations. Their names are Edward Tufte and Garr Reynolds. Here is by the way a video of Reynolds, which is part of a very big and very interesting video series in youtube, called @google talks, featuring talks with famous authors, politicians, scientists, etc. (e.g. Richard Florida, John Medina, Noam Chomsky, Clay Shirky and Henry Jenkins, ...)
LEARNING: Here are two very good archives you can check out till your brain explodes :-) - next to the @google-talks: There are more fantastic opportunities to listen (and see) important and famous people and their subjects online in order to increase our knowledge and to learn learn learn.

5 Comments

  1. admin
    Cool that he mentions Bill Strickland. You have to take a look at his wonderful TED Presentation. It's not only good because it's well presented (featuring Herbie Hancock on the Piano), it's also a quite agitating and interesting topic.
  2. drnn1076
    Katja Thanks for this video, indeed interesting. In my personal experience each presentation is different and it depends a lot on the sort of audience. I also think, as he after 45 minutes concluded, that everyone should develop a personal style according to her/his personality. I for instance use to close an "art" image a painting or a photo of a sculpture, performance etc. and always try to find something catching to open. My problem: the speed, I speak very fast specially when I start and it always brings some confusedness. However I got some contradictory feelings with this sort of talks, they always sound to me a formula-like for success, do you remember the guy saying "Winners and losers" and scoffing at others...? uhmmm. I enjoy very much the idea of story telling, it sounded natural and not technology driven, however there are different ways of telling stories according to each culture. Though in some moments it was just to gringo style (gringo=American). Now I completely agree with the guy on the bullet-culture, and the reading-slides boring, to the six main points he proposed I would add: challenge, challenge the audience make them to do and effort to understand, to wake curiosity. Definitely a worth to watch video.
  3. klangeland
    I really like to listen to good presentations and to present myself. One of my problems is sometimes, that I have to present even though I do not like the topic. Or I have to present in a group, where I can not be as "creative" or open-minded and daring as if I would do my own presentation. This video reminded me of the great power a good presentation can have. I have seen so many bad presentations, and we got so used to it. And I really agree: Presentations are boring, not the people who do them. So the only solution to me seems to be to change and adjust "the topic" of any presentation in order to make it "my" topic (by storytelling). And also to reconsider carefully the necessity of each and every presentation and meeting we do. Is it necessary or just a waste of time? Anyhow, of course the talk was ideological ("You folks here at google, you are the best!"), maybe gringo style (strange words you have for Americans ... I just knew bimbo before, but this is something else :-), maybe, Ricardo, you are more aware of this certain type of style because of the geographical neighborhood. Anyhow, it inspires me to aim higher for any future presentation I will do and to dare new ways of presentation.
  4. drnn1076
    HI, here a definition of "Gringo" . The word "American" is complicated basically because it refers to a whole continent as the Royal Spanish Academy advises: the use of American to refer exclusively to inhabitants of the United States should be avoided; this corrupt use is due to the fact that U.S. citizens often shorten the name to America, (in English, without an accent mark) to refer to their country. One should not forget America is the name of the entire continent and all who inhabit it are Americans. This of course it is just general information, but I personally do not use very often the word American to refer to citizens from the U.S.
  5. klangeland
    I now also looked into the Ted page and it really is amazing. But I watched a not so convincing presentation of Alan Kay. I expected him and his way of talking to be completely different. By the way, I spoke to some Americans/US citizens. They are not very happy with the word "gringo". It has a some stereotypisation and prejudice within its connotation, similar to the German word "Ossi" (used for people from the area of the former GDR or the socalled "Neue Bundesländer). I actually have to smile about the word "American" cause in the bakery, they also sell a very yummi cake, called "Amerikaner". It is pretty flat cake topped with a rich layer of sugar icing and mostly sold for a very fair price.

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