Month: November 2017

For my presentation for module 4 I am going to compare two ALS fundraisers; Roll for Rob, a fundraiser that my local skateshop puts on every year and the Napa Valley Ride toDefeat ALS.

 

Roll for Rob is a fundraiser for Rob Pontes, a local to the Western Massachusetts skateboarding scene who was diagnosed with ALS four years ago. Each year, my local skateshop organizes events with a San Francisco based skateboard distributor DLX to raise money for Rob’s treatment as well as to support his family. To raise money, DLX prints special shirts and skateboard decks that directly benefit Rob and are sold at skateshops across Massachusetts and at the DLX sponsored events.

 

The Nappa Valley ride to defeat ALS is quite a different fundraiser though, the goal for 2017 is to raise 1,000,000 for ALS treatment research as opposed to Roll for Rob’s which is 30,000. The Ride to Defeat ALS is an annual event in napa valley where bikers fundraise in a more competitive approach with both team and individual leaderboards posted on the homepage of their website.

 

The differences between these two organizations are numerous and I am excited to dissect them in my next presentation

I foundMartin Luther King Jr.’s last speech very powerful and thought provoking, not unlike many other speeches he gave while spearheading the civil rights movement. In this speech Dr. King criticizes the ambiguity of different aspects of the US Constitution such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. King is able to emphasize flaws he sees in the constitution by saying “I read somewhere of a freedom of speech/assembly/press”. Through repeating this phrase, King is suggesting that he read the rights of the constitution from some document of little importance or in this case a document which has been neglected in the sense that the enforcers of it aren’t reading it themselves. In the second half of the excerpt we watched King prophecies that someday there will be racial equality in the United States, but it will not happen immediately. Ironically, King talks about how he may not make it to the bright future ahead of the civil rights movement but that it will happen someday. By saying this, King is providing a sense of drive for the civil rights movement that focuses on future generations as opposed to settling for something for the current generation.

For my video, I decided to choose someone who doesn’t follow youtube voice. Skateline is a weekly video series where Gary Rodgers recaps everything that has happened in skateboarding in the past week. Gary Rodgers’ style does not follow youtube voice in the sense that he uses his distinct, hyper tone to stand out from other youtube personalities.

For class on Tuesday, September 26th we spent the majority of the class in the library working on our class blogs. After touching up our blogs, we formed groups and made posters for the data we collected a week before in class. In this exercise we touched on the hierarchy of information on a poster and we also looked at an example poster from a student science fair last semester (pictured below). The posters that we made in class were presented by students from our class at a bike summit the following weekend. 

For class on September 12th we met a Gleeson library and biked to the SF bike coalition on Market St. At the beginning of our ride we ended up getting lost while trying to make our way down to the edge of the Panhandle. I remember that getting lost without prof. Hunt was definitely a turning point where our class got much closer. After meeting up with the rest of the class, Justin navigated us through the high-traffic neighborhoods in between USF and Market St., where we would stop to talk with staff from the SF bike coalition.

Structure for Presentation II

Introduction

• Background of Rodney Mullen and skateboarding career
• Information/short recap of the video I chose
• How this video pertains to me

Paragraph 1 – Dissecting the evidence Mullen

• • Success through collaboration
  • Comparing Mullen’s “Personal Evidence” to Gore’s “Statistical Evidence”

 

• Takeaway: Both kinds of evidence can be used to the same effect in their own respective contexts

 

Paragraph 2 – Further explanation of ‘Personal Evidence’

• Why Mullen’s evidence worked in the context of his presentation
• How Mullen’s visual evidence is substantial for his presentation

Paragraph 3 – How this pertains to bicycling

• There isno direct connection
• Making a connection through gaining inspiration
• Takeaway: Gaining inspiration from the atmosphere you live in promotes great success

Closing

• Reiteration of points
• End with a quote *Food for thought

“To compete, even rivals must cooperate”

I don’t think that I have ever truly sacrificed or worked to my full capacity for a team/group because it is not a personality trait of mine. Throughout highschool I was on a number of sports teams, including 2 highly competitive basketball teams, but I never felt pressed to work as hard as I could in competition. I don’t think of my lack of full effort as lazy, but more a careful assessment of my well being vs.

Thesis: Establishing credibility with any audience is heavily based on your relationship with the audience. Whether your audience is close friends or complete strangers, you need to know where you stand with them and who they are before you can address them.

Story about the embarcadero and free ice cream – A community I belong to is people who skateboard in San Francisco. A couple of weeks ago I went skateboarding on the Embarcadero with three friends of mine. There is a small plaza on the Embarcadero that is smooth granite with a couple of ledge features where every weekend a crowd of skateboarders ranging from 5 people to 30 people congregate to skate the plaza and hang out. While hanging out at EMB with my friends, we were approached by another skateboarder and quickly got wrapped up in conversation. We ended up staying on the embarcadero for a long time that day and talked with our new friend for a number of hours. As the topics of conversation shifted I realized that this skateboarder knew one of my friends from home which was completely random because the town I live in is on the complete other side of the country and not to mention my town has less than 5,000 residents. After talking about this for a while, our friend told us a story about he and a couple of his friends went to the famous Humphry Slocombe ice cream shop in the ferry building after skating at EMB and the cashier refused to let them pay because he saw that they skateboarded as well. At the time I remember not thinking much of this story and dismissing it little after he told us. As the day went on we skated until it got dark then decided it was about time to head home but before we left, one of my friends who had been skating during our friend’s story about the free ice cream suggested that we go to Humphry Slocombe before leaving. We packed up our things and skated over to the ferry building where all four of us ordered ice cream but when we tried to pay, the ordinary-looking guy behind the counter refused to take any money we tried to give him. After that we thanked him and went on our way. That is my story about my community.

Explain the difference between telling story to different audiences

• Differences in tone and diction
• Less ‘slang’ because I know the audience
• Emphasizing different aspects of the story based on the audience’s relationship with the story