Ennovy.org

Tonight I had my 461 presentation. We had to do a strategic and financial analysis of a company, and our group picked Apple. We still have a written report due next week. The presentation went well!

We had 8 people in our group, and it was a little hard to coordinate everyone’s schedule so we could practice. The first time that we met to go through the entire presentation was an hour before class started. But we were confident going in. Both Chris and Sean are Ivey guys, who have to present all the time. In fact Chris didn’t even bother practicing, because he knew what he was going to say. And when Sean heard that, he didn’t want to rehearse either.

During our presentation, we ran into a couple of small problems. One slide was in the wrong place (but luckily it was duplicated in the place where it was supposed to be), and we ran out of time at the end. Sean, who was supposed to wrap it up, had to rush a bit, which was pity because his ending was fantastic. Am a little bit annoyed at Michelle and Stephanie. They said that they’d take 2 minutes each max, and they actually went overboard at 4-5 minutes each, and it threw everyone off. Bill (the prof) is lenient on a lot of things, but not on time.

The best thing about it though, was for me personally. I talked my allotted 4 minutes and I felt like I did it beautifully. I knew everything I was going to say. I didn’t even need my notes, even though I had them in front of me. I just looked at the power point slides once in a while for a reminder. I kept eye contact with the people around the room, and they were listening!

In fact, I think that this is one of the best things I learned in my (soon to be) four years at university - the ability to present in front of a group of people. In high school, I’d get really nervous and start shaking before hand (a certain English ISP comes to mind) but I’ve come to realize that presenting is really not that bad. I do believe I have to work on my voice, though. My classmates said that they could hear me fine, but I think my voice is too low and too soft.