That was quite frankly one of the most fun presentations I have ever had. Between the entire TED talk setup, presenting with one of my best friends, and DJing for a class, I was having a blast. In most other presentations we aren't given the opportunity to do whatever we want for 7 weeks, and with the TED assignment, we were able to simply do whatever we were passionate about. There aren't many projects out there like this so kudos to McDaniels and Perlman for coming up with this fantastic project.
That was my kiss-up section of the blog... No but in all seriousness this project was amazing. I have always wanted to DJ and being given time to simply explore this passion was awesome. I think that our (Hassan and I) passion for music was evidently shown in our TED talk as we were dancing, and "getting hype" in front of the whole class. At first I was a bit nervous about dancing, and DJing in front of the class as I was afraid of blank stares, but once I got in front of everyone, it didn't matter because I was enjoying my passion and sharing it with others. As my presentation mentioned, sharing our passion is one of the best feelings when others enjoy it as well. In all honesty, I didn't even look at the crowd as I was too busy DJing and dancing. However, when I did glance up, I saw all the bros putting their hands in the air. It felt awesome to have a support group like that just validating what Hassan and I were doing.
Soooooo now for my self evaluation:
Cons: In terms of actually showcasing my personal DJing ability I kinda messed up during our mix. First off, I touched the effect button at the wrong time, so the song backspinned at an awkward time. Then, my hand accidentally touched the deck, so the song stopped at another random point. I'm not sure if the audience noticed, however that part didn't really show my DJing skills that well. Being that Hassan and I covered so much of DJing in 7 weeks, I also felt that we weren't able to show it all in the 2 minutes we allocated for DJing.
Overall: For the time given, and besides those 2 mistakes, I think we did a really good job DJing. We connected with the audience, and replicated a party.
Overall: I think our content was pretty on point. After talking to Mr. Mcdaniels about not really focusing on our process, I am reassured that our application and message was much more important than the actual process. However not talking about it at all may be a point of downfall.
That was my kiss-up section of the blog... No but in all seriousness this project was amazing. I have always wanted to DJ and being given time to simply explore this passion was awesome. I think that our (Hassan and I) passion for music was evidently shown in our TED talk as we were dancing, and "getting hype" in front of the whole class. At first I was a bit nervous about dancing, and DJing in front of the class as I was afraid of blank stares, but once I got in front of everyone, it didn't matter because I was enjoying my passion and sharing it with others. As my presentation mentioned, sharing our passion is one of the best feelings when others enjoy it as well. In all honesty, I didn't even look at the crowd as I was too busy DJing and dancing. However, when I did glance up, I saw all the bros putting their hands in the air. It felt awesome to have a support group like that just validating what Hassan and I were doing.
Soooooo now for my self evaluation:
DJing(Product)
Pros: What I thought Hassan and I did extremely well was not worrying about what others thought of our DJing. As mentioned before, this was a concern, but once we were in the moment we were able to display our skills, and have a good time. Obviously the audion isn't a Highschool party, however when we treated it like one, it actually felt the same. I also think we did well showing people what a real DJ set was like with the loud music and DJs going crazy. In addition by dressing up like the stereotypical DJ I think we made a connection with the audience.Cons: In terms of actually showcasing my personal DJing ability I kinda messed up during our mix. First off, I touched the effect button at the wrong time, so the song backspinned at an awkward time. Then, my hand accidentally touched the deck, so the song stopped at another random point. I'm not sure if the audience noticed, however that part didn't really show my DJing skills that well. Being that Hassan and I covered so much of DJing in 7 weeks, I also felt that we weren't able to show it all in the 2 minutes we allocated for DJing.
Overall: For the time given, and besides those 2 mistakes, I think we did a really good job DJing. We connected with the audience, and replicated a party.
Presentation skills
Pros: I think that our presentation had a really good visual supplement with the Prezi that took forever to make, but paid off in the end. I thought it was creative and supplemental, but we also didn't depend on it.
Cons: In terms of our actual presentation skills I think that I personally could've done more practicing as I stuttered quite a bit. Most of the better TED talks were ones where the speaker didn't use notecards and instead connected with the audience. I felt that I was a little too reliant on my notecards and didn't connect as much as I could've with the speech. As many said during the presentations, practice makes perfect, and I didn't practice enough. Another con was that I felt like I was straining my voice to talk over Hassan's scratching. I knew I had to elevate my voice, however I think that I was somewhat screaming at the audience, which is never good. Lastly, the clicker gave me a bit of trouble as I had to balance my notecards as well as the clicker while trying to present. I was trying to connect with the audience, but I also had to be wary of the prezi movement. At points I fell behind with the clicker and then had to click multiple times to catch up. This caused me to press the Jackie Chan picture before I wanted it to, and that was going to be an impactful transition.
Overall: I think more rehearsal should've been done with the clicker and notecards, as it kind of took away from the presentation. Otherwise our prezi was pretty solid, and I really felt good about using it compared to powerpoint.
Content
Pro: I think that we clearly inspired through our passion as we displayed our passion with stories, and our actual performance. I think that the stories we gave were much better than giving a generalized statement as this is unrelateable to the audience and didn't really show the real us. I also think that our butterfly metaphor was really cool as it was funny, and showed how DJing had changed us.
Ehh: I'm not sure if this was a pro/con because Hassan and I didn't really want to get caught up in our process as we had more stuff to talk about. Simply going through the process would've been a terrible presentation, however we never mentioned our goals, or process of learning how to DJ. Instead we used stories about staying up late and practicing, but never really explained how we took to learning how to DJ.
Message
Pro: I think that our message was unique to the generic, "try and you will succeed" message, and I think that is what made ours stand out a bit. I think that sharing your passion was a theme that not many people talked about and it shed light on a new message. I also think that we did a good job leading up to the message besides just saying it. Instead we talked about sharing our passion with Hassan's sister, and people from Perkiomen Valley. This made the message fit with our presentation and not just be something thrown in at the end.
Ehh: Was it the best message ever? No. We kind of went along the same route of "Passion does ____" Although it was slightly unique it wasn't THAT unique. We didn't demand for anything, or provide anything new to ponder. It was just a nice message.
I Overall: I think we could've been a little bit more unique, but our message was overall, impactful and made sense.
NOW for the grading:
- Visual component/Delivery: 5/6 (Stuttering, Prezi issues)
- Product: 6/6 (Engaging and Awesome)
Message: 5.5/6 (Not that Unique)
Passion: 6/6 (Was Clearly Evident)
Content: 5.5/6 (Excluded Process)
OVERALL: 28/30 = 93.3%
-
