EXAMPLE RECAP
To recap, here are the 2 examples from the previous blogs, plus a bonus:
EXAMPLE 1: Professor of TV Production
“Hi, I’m Clarissa, but you can call me Rissa. I think inside the box, because I teach TV production. I also work with IT staff on campuses to help them connect with their faculty on media techniques in the classroom. I’ll be doing a session here tomorrow on that topic at 1:30. Here’s my card. May I have your card? I’ll contact you about joining my network on LinkedIn so we can stay in touch. I hope to see you at my session tomorrow.” (84 words)
EXAMPLE 2: Researcher on Cheating
“Hi, I’m Bucko. I do research on cheating. I present a dozen techniques for faculty to use to detect and eliminate cheating in their classrooms. I’m doing a workshop on a few of them on Thurs. at 10AM. Here’s my card. Do you have a card? Let me know if I can help your faculty. Here’s an invitation to my university’s reception tonight. See you there.” (66 words)
BONUS EXAMPLE 3: Professor of Film and Media
“Hi, I’m Jim from Pandora University. I create Oscar-winning movies, just not this year. I’m working on the sequel to my 2009 release. It’s called Avatar 2. I’m casting for parts now, especially blue people. No, not smurfs. Would you be interested in auditioning? Here’s my card with audition information. I hope to see you there." (56)
Any questions? Is this helping at all? Each example provides buckets of critical information in only 56–84 words. Notice the shift in emphasis from the traditional intro of “what I do” to “what I can do for you with follow-up.”
WHAT ABOUT DELIVERY?
How do you say it? With style and pizzazz! Whatever you say in your version of the above spiels, say it with passion and enthusiasm. Convey energy, excitement, and professionalism about what you do. If you’re not excited about what you do, why should anyone else be? Are you forgettable or unforgettable with a positive image?
The final blog in this long, overdrawn, bloated series will suggest how you can determine whether your spiel was effective. There will also be some bottom-line advice. See you tomorrow.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
There is something about the flick Avatar that seemed really familiar.
Supermodel-like, 10-feet tall, blue-skinned, golden-eyed Na’vi aliens with tails? "NO!"
Kaleidoscopic and bioluminescent flora and fauna? "NO!"
A 3-D IMAX experience that closes the space between you and the alien world to render it up close and personal. "THAT’S IT!" Avatar makes the computer-generated sci-fi world of Pandora (aka Na’vi-land) seem real.
It’s almost like being in your classroom with your Net Gener students—YOU in your professorial-Gen X (born 1961–1981) or Boomer (born 1943–1960) world AND your STUDENTS (born 1982–2003) in their high-tech, twitch-speed, remixed, digital, mobile, always-on media world. Their world may be perceived as a bit alien by many professors. It’s a close encounter of the Net Gener kind!
However, Avatar-the-flick is much more than that. It’s a journey into eye-popping visuals with sensory overload of imaginative vistas, creatures, and characters of titanic proportions. It uses state-of-the-art technologies to create avatars— genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA mixed with Na’vi DNA from the distant planet of Pandora. These scientifically-grown Na’vi lookalikes permit mere-mortal, ex-military mercenaries and scientists to be transformed into avatars.
Why? What’s the point of creating avatars? To make buckets of moola. Yes, but there’s another plot-related reason: They see, fear, taste, and feel like the natives and have all of the same physical characteristics and adeptness. The avatar versions of our hero ex-Marine Jake Sully and Dr. Grace Augustine, an exobiologist and head of the Avatar Program, permitted them to infiltrate the Na’vi culture and gather intelligence (aka intel) about the natives to convince them to leave their home turf.
Colonel Miles Quaritch, head of security and psycho-warrior, who had a profound disregard for Pandora’s inhabitants, ordered Sully: “I want you to learn from inside, to gain their trust.” The avatars were supposed to set up schools and teach them English (Is there any other language?). This was a computer-generated, undercover covert operation. If the natives didn’t leave of their own free will, Quaritch would blow them to kingdom come, digitally-speaking, of course.
Notwithstanding a romantic subplot between Sully and Neytiri, the violence designed to wipe out the Na’vi humanoids, and loads of political-social-economic connotations, Avatar suggested to me one key educational message, which, due to space limitations here, will be described tomorrow. You don’t want to miss it.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
