In Hong Kong last week, I heard a guy tell me how to give presentations. Unfortunately, the fact that he was wearing a striped shirt where every piece was a different colour slightly diminished his credibility. Besides that, his powerpoint slides were awful. See below:
Terrifying isn't it?
He did, however, mention a few things that I found interesting. He mentioned that when giving a speech, you need to speak in terms of pictures. Don't give me big jargon words - just say it like it is. Turns out I think I'm a Generation Y with a Millenials mindset...See? That doesn't make sense does it? As a member of Generation Y, I welcome feedback. I need it. I thrive on knowing what I did well and where I can improve. Okay, please don't just tell me I suck at life. But I do welcome knowing that maybe next time I shouldn't move around so much while giving a presentation because you find it distracting. Please let me know how I am doing. People have said that us Gen Ys require this type of babying but in my opinion, there's nothing wrong in wanting to know in which areas you can improve.
Why do people have to hold back? Why do I have to hold back? I'm sure there were times where I could have said what I was thinking. I think it was because I didn't want to offend anyone? I don't know about you, but this is something I should work on. This train of thought leads me to "judging" people and it's a whole other path that I don't want to pursue.
In other news, having returned from a mini-trip overseas, I am meeting more of my peers from around the world. The majority of them are AMAZING. Never have I met so many well-spoken, cultured individuals who are just as nerdy as I am! What was also interesting was the clear difference between Asian culture and non-Asian culture. Teams from non-Asia spent most of the "get-to-know-you" time around drinking. We spent times in clubs and bars and got to know people that way. However, we did not see any of the Asian teams out. One of the Brits noted it as the Asian culture does not really revolve around drinking. I wonder what they did to get to know people. On the other hand, maybe they were there to compete hardcore and spent the time practicing? Except only 1 Chinese team made the finals while the rest came from "drinking cultures" like Australia, Canada, UK, Germany and the US. Granted the US team weren't out much but they were from Johns Hopkins so it explains a lot... (kidding. they were nice.)
Then you have countries where East-meets-West like Hong Kong and Singapore. They were out some nights and other nights they weren't. Both were social but also kept to themselves. Funny how that works out. The non-Asian country teams like Canada, Netherlands, USA, and UK were always planning things with each other making sure that they were rarely out on their own. Can we extrapolate this kind of thinking? I'm not sure. What I do know is that I have a better connection with the aforementioned teams because we went out and got to know each other in a social setting instead of just competition.
That's a lot of rambling. Done now.
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