Today we had a guest speaker come into give a little information on her experience on data collecting and the process it goes through to get published. We also briefly talked about the stories Bertine and her adventurous journey and Solnit’s essay about the upbringing of mansplaining. Towards the end of class we formed groups. In my group, I was with Aaron and Jordan, we worked on a presentation for bicycle fundraising and awareness. We did some research on the types of campaigns trying to bring awareness of diseases through bicycles, specifically I found an the organization MS: Bay to Bay ride. This bike ride is an event that is suppose to help fund people with Multiple Sclerosis, a disease that affects both the mind and nervous system in the spinal cord causing no functionality in the spinal or paralysis.

Political scientist Erica Chenoweth used to believe that violence is the most reliable way to get rid of a dictator, or the only solution to our problems. From history that is the case, from the decades of civil wars and government rebellions, violence was prevalent everywhere. Erica believes that peaceful resistance and protesting can be an arguably powerful force. Below she put together a chart suggesting that even though there was success through violent actions, nonviolent forms of action proved to have a higher rate of success and lower failure rate.

To wrap up her statement, Chenoweth states that even if violent resistance movements succeed, they still result in long term problems. It turns out the way you resist matters in the long run too. So nonviolent acts should be ruled out as it might actually be the better choice.

Segment the Audience: My group

Duarte says that when giving a presentation, zero in your ideas into a subgroup, a group you believe will agree and support your ideas. Even though you are catering towards this subgroup, you will need to appeal to the overall audience. I think this is most effective in business pitches, or political speeches, not so much towards a broad audience. Through out the writing, Duarte talks to his audience in a way that is very much like a client, “present to the one person who is most influential.” The gist of Duarte in Segment the Audience is that when presenting to an audience, you are zeroing in your idea into a subgroup, particularly a group of people who you can benefit off of.

Side notes from class:

Don’t fluff presentations especially towards upper corporate people

• Getting to know your audience
• Walk in their shoes, to understand their point of view
• Knowledge of audience
• have the power through speaking and progression to change their opinions
• what makes you qualified to take to this audience
• get common grounds with the audience, makes it easier to get your point across

Pro and Cons of my presentation. Starting with the cons, at first glance the first thing you’d notice is my eye contact towards the audience. I would say I struggle to get my ideas across without my notes, so that is why I think I have maintain poor eye contact with the audience. Another thing I would criticize is my tone of voice, I speak in a sort of monotone voice and it is easy to lose focus my what I’m saying if it doesn’t you or the audience at all. Like the Ted talks we have watched they speak in a passionate voice that really echoes through the crowd, speakers like them get feedback almost spontaneously based on the crowds reaction. So I believe it is important to make sure that when talking I’m getting my point/idea across clearly to the audience. Now with the pros, I believe my story telling was alright, I found a topic I had great interest in and invested my time into it. The whole process of find, delivering the video wasn’t boring at all to me as I was intrigued by what the video had to offer. Another positive I think I had was my volume of voice, it is loud enough hear, but is going back to the cons it is very important to speak with fluctuating tone to not bore your audience members.

From this presentation project, I’ve learned stuff that I need to improve on more, how to portray my newly found ideas to new group/audience. Also my point of view on credibility remains the same, if the background of the person doesn’t quite match with their presented idea, then there may be a probability of some bad credibility.

For future presentations, I will use what I learned from the mistakes of my first presentation to make my 2nd speech a lot for concise and strong.

I would say this was an interesting day if I would say the least. The class concept really blew me away, as I firstly thought the class was solely on public speaking/ presentations. But really it is more than that, we’ve learned to post blogs onto a website for our entire class to see, explored the streets of San Francisco, and really learned a thing or two about each other. It quite amazing to have a class that is more proactive and more hands on as in my opinion gets you stimulated. Stimulated to learn, which is quite important to learning. Side note from my Psych class: we are able to recall more when stimulated in a positive state, due to the fact there are less hormones going through our head jumbling up the information we are trying to process, so compared to an average class sitting 1 to 2 hours; you’d get a lot more out of the proactive classes.

My first presentation, I wouldn’t rate it as my best nor my worst. From my perspective it looks as normal as it could be, but from another stand point it looks like I was nervous; which I was at the moment. The way you could tell was from my tone of voice, body language, and maintained eye contact with the audience. Looking back at my presentations, I noticed all the giveaways of an amateur presenter. I remembered I tried to maintain eye contact with the audience, but as soon as I looked up I would forget my words. So looking down at my notes may be a part that I need to focus on fro later presentations. From this, I’ve learned that what to improve on more and what to do less of. Was a great learning moment!

Post 4 Class

Today was quite interesting, we all got through our presentations and did so great! Was a such a learning experience. Everyone did a great job gathering their evidence around the Panhandle.  Our group, Kyle and Lexi did a wonderful job recording information on the pedestrian side of the Panhandle. It is quite interesting to learn about the history of San Francisco, such as the bike path we road on that was over 100 years old! This was a new part of San Francisco I haven’t seen before and it was really insightful going about the city parks and roads.

Class 3 Post

On September 5th, our class rode our bikes to the conservatory of flowers as our designated location to present our first half of speeches on credibility. We settled between two towering tress which semi-portrayed a stage like section. I thought it was really peculiar to give a speech in such a public area, surrounded by random strangers along with our peers, but it wasn’t as half bad as I thought it would be. It sort of made sense speaking in front of random people, much like a political speech or public announcement. We then took a break half way through the list of presenters and moved locations for the next half of speeches. We rode a few miles further to the California Academy of Science. There we explored the surroundings and found a very interesting stage to present on. This was quite an interesting day, compared to the typical everyday class setup. We were always on the move, experience each environment we encountered. It was also awesome to try out the It’s it ice cream for the first time.

In the Bikesnobnyc written by Eben Weiss, he gave his point of view on the types of bikers, attaching along a type of personality, their motives, and relations to other bikers. He wrote this novel in such a comedic manner, where it was quite captivating to read. The gist of his writing is that, he makes fun of the types of bikers, from hardcore cyclist to just the causal urban riders.

I would like to say I identified as most of the characteristics he named out, but I would have to say I’ve become an Urban Cyclist. As Weiss wrote this particular section, I couldn’t help notice that is sounded awfully like what I would do. Specifically he states they are ” [roughly] in their twenties, [have a] respect for track racing,  [ride unnecessarily expensive] bikes.” A lot of these I was able to relate to, especially the part about riding to seek authenticity; basically meaning fondness of riding vintage bicycle frames.

Outline for Project 3

This coming week, my presentation will be on the aspects of the design community, how we operate, get projects done, and how our sketches turn out finalized. It’s a process and is all because of the way we work together critique each others work to make to best of it. I’ll most likely bring in some of my own examples to present, and show the step by step process we go through. What I’m trying to get out of this for the audience is to show how the design community work together. Design work maybe individual, but we collaborate off each other to sprout new types of ideas.