As I mentioned earlier, I have a few speaking gigs coming up, including one in Hartford, CT in March. I’m actually doing two presentations for Hartford: my job hunt presentation (which seems to be one of my best sellers; I’ve done this presentation several times, and I will also be doing it for STC Summit), and my presentation on technical writing. So, I downloaded the WE Local PowerPoint templates from their speaker’s resource page so that I could apply them to my presentations.
I haven’t yet applied it to my job search presentation. To be honest, I’m not terribly worried about it. It’s mainly a matter of transferring my material to the new template, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.
The tech writing one, however, was another story. When I looked at my slides, I realized just how much it needed to be overhauled. It wasn’t very well organized, it was out of date, and I’ve grown considerably in my profession since I last gave that presentation (the last time I presented it was in New York in 2019). The presentation badly needed to be rewritten. So I spent my entire afternoon this past Sunday putting it into the WE Local template.
When I was finished, what I had was practically (though not exactly) a brand-new presentation. It is better organized, more clear, and I included points that I did not address before I restructured it. I think the new (old?) presentation is much better than it was. Not only am I looking forward to giving it in a couple of months, I’m also looking forward to submitting it to more events.
Likewise, I also plan to revamp my presentation about — well — presenting. I’ve only given this presentation once, and quite frankly, not only is it not very good, it’s also narrowly focused, and like my old tech writing presentation, it’s also not very well organized. Although I haven’t started yet, I essentially plan to pull a This Old House on it, completely tearing it down, and rebuilding it. I already have an idea in the back of my head as to how I’m going to do it, and I’ve already rebranded it (in fact, I even submitted it to SQL Saturday NYC in May).
I’ve been trying to come up with new presentation ideas. I’ve mentioned to people that I’ve reached the point where I’m starting to recycle submissions to PASS Summit and other conferences. I might still work on some new ones (stay tuned). But in the meantime, it’s worth my time to take some of my older presentations and give them new life.
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