Hi my name is Matt and I’ll be assessing the evidence of a ted talk given by Rodney Mullen who is a former pro freestyle and street skateboarder originally from Gainesville, FL. Mullen was sponsored by Powell-Peralta skateboards throughout the early 80s and then switched to World Industries skateboards for the remainder of the 80s/ early 90s. Mullen is often referred to as the “Father of street skateboarding” because he invented many notable tricks such as the kickflip, heelflip, tre-flip and even the ollie. I chose Rodney Mullen for my evidence assessment because he is a personal hero of mine and also he has a very entertaining ted talk about his personal career as a skateboarder.
In the video I selected, the evidence that Mullen gives isn’t quite like the evidence found in other presentations we’ve watched. Because Mullen is talking about a topic as personal as his own professional career, his evidence is mostly based in examples of personal experience. An example of this would be when Mullen is talking about a sense of collaboration in his success. This is used as evidence through slides of people who influenced Mullen to become the skater he eventually would. While this evidence definitely adds validity to Mullen’s story, it might not be applicable as evidence in other forms. An example “hard” evidence that I like is a ted talk that Al Gore gave last winter on the optimism of climate change. I chose this video to show a contrast in the different kinds of evidence that can be used to the same effect during presentations. In Al Gore’s ted talk, he uses real, gathered evidence which both increases his credibility and makes for substantial evidence. While the differences between Gore and Mullen’s approaches to evidence are very different, they both use their evidence in the same way; to make their overall credibility extremely high.
Mullen’s use of evidence is substantial for his topic and his presentation. I think that a key in breaking down someone’s use of evidence is all in the context of the presentation. In Mullen’s case, his visual evidence is minimal which is always a plus for me in the context of a ted talk. As for the evidence itself, it directly pertains and backs up Mullen’s presentation. Mullen’s evidence easily could’ve taken a turn for the negative if the clips and photos he showed were getting off topic, but instead they are refined and much more effective. While Mullen’s evidence isn’t as impressive as statistics gathered by teams of scientists, it pertains to his story. Again touching on the context of Mullen’s evidence; while slides filled with numbers and statistics would make for more impressive evidence, the evidence Mullen chose to use is much more effective for his presentation.
How this pertains to bicycling; Unfortunately because Mullen’s ted talk contains no references to cycling or to bicycles in general, there is no way to closely tie together Mullen’s story to cycling. However, there is a way to tie the two together in a larger picture sense. In his talk Mullen praises the idea of progressing in a hobby through incorporating different influences and translating them to that hobby. For example, Rodney Mullen was one of the best “Freestyle” skateboarders at a very young age (14) but in just a few short years, Mullen became obsolete because the style of skateboarding had changed. Mullen was able to become one of the best “Street” skateboarders because he incorporated a freestyle aspect into his street skateboarding which was completely original at the time.
The main point that Mullen makes is that in order to succeed and progress in your success, you must be open to collaboration and intaking influence. This overarching point is such blanket advice that is highly applicable to most scenarios where you are trying to reach a goal. In terms of biking this could be training with a cycling contemporary to become a better cyclist, or looking at other cities’ bikeshare systems and bike path layout plans to gain inspiration before remodeling a new system for your own city. Thank you!
