Chris Lara 5-13-14

Chris Lara 5-13-14

I believe public speaking is a skill that can be mastered with repetition and practice.

Recently, I was able to attend a meeting with Father Joe, former principle of Holy Redeemer High School, to discuss the needs of his home, in Detroit. I presented this to a group called “The Dad’s Club” over at Catholic Central, and I had a fun, formal time doing it.

Before presenting, I prepared myself with a few tricks I learned from the Ideal Group. One trick I tried was taking notes for each slide, and the house. This allowed my memory to recognize details I would normally forget if I had not taken notes. I also tried to bring a physical copy, but was instead fortunate enough to use a gentleman’s iPad. This worked even better because of the quick transitions between the slides. Also, I noticed that I could barely hear the speakers talk, even when I was sitting in the front row, so I held the microphone closer while annunciation my words. This allowed people to hear and understand my presentation.

We began with a short introduction. Father Joe introduced himself and his mission for the presentation; which was to acknowledge the necessities of the house. Such things included: sealed windows, glass blocks, ventilation resolutions, piping and boiler resolutions, and other small details needed to be resolved. These all added up to about seven slides, which lasted for about ten minutes.

Overall, I felt that people understood what the purpose of our presence was for, and I enjoyed talking in public. Since it was a small group of about 70, I felt that this was beneficial practice for presenting to larger groups in the future.