Supporting Others, Helping Each Other

I had the pleasure of being invited to give a presentation about the SHP “Unheard Holler “blog site to members of the Metropolitan at Cambridge. At the time I knew very little of the work the Metropolitan was involved in or what areas it covered. I had been invited because one of the organising committee had seen me give a short talk about the “Holler” blog site once before.

A wee bit of research and felt it would be interesting to meet the people involved with Metropolitan. Also I had never been to Cambridge.

A week before I was to give the presentation I learnt that I was the only one giving a talk and I was scheduled to inform and entertain for 1 hour. The thought of filling an hour to keep people interested and not being bored or falling asleep seemed a daunting task for me as I had never done a presentation without support and never for a full hour. Fortunately I was given some tips and advice from people such as Connie, (now ex SHP), and Alana from “On the Road Media”.

So of I toddled to Cambridge a tad nervous but excited about my adventure. I would like to say as I approached Cambridge I had similar feelings to some of past students who were starting out on their voyage of discovery and learning but my thoughts were more about finding the venue and not being late. Fortunately I arrived in time for lunch, always a priority when attending any meeting /conference, although the taxi driver did get lost for a short period. Was this an omen I thought!! My nervousness was somewhat settled by the friendly greeting and conversation over lunch, which was very good. 

I began the presentation with a piece from the “Unheard Holler” YouTube page that had been recorded from the ‘Autumn Online’ workshops held in the SHP hostels in central London in conjunction with “On Road “media. The workshops were to introduce people to blogging and how to use the “Unheard Holler” blog site. I choose this piece because I felt this would catch their attention as the piece was about art work and set to music all done by a person who at first was very shy at contributing to the workshop and the blog site. In fact at first he would not even come into the room!!
This was followed by a brief history of the foundation of the “Unheard Holler’ blog site and the co-operation and the work done between OnRoadmedia and SHP and of course that the site had been nominated for two awards, shortlisted for the Nominet Internet Awards 2012 and finalists in the T4G Awards 2012, Technology4Good.

I felt it was important to emphasise how the blog site enabled people to give their opinions, a different and personal point of view on issues that they feel strongly about and may be ignored or viewed with shallowness, lack of depth in content and without personal experience.  

I had decided to choose a mix of the “Unheard Holler” written work and the ‘Unheard Holler” You Tube video page as this would vary the presentation but more importantly show the width and quality of the work produced by the people contributing to the blog site.

During the presentation I encouraged questions and contributions from the Metropolitan people as this helped me to expand further on the work done and the advantages of the ‘Unheard Holler” blog and to see what was drawing their attention.

As usual when you are new to something and a wee bit nervous there are a couple of glitches in my case it was shifting between the blog contributions and the vlogs fortunately one of the group helped me through this.

After all my nerves and worry the hour passed very quickly, in fact we ran over by several minutes and only an intervention by the chair brought it to an end. I still felt there was more to cover.

I felt the presentation went well, far better than I expected, and the response from people there were was very good. I found the group as a whole and individually was very interested and stimulated by the work done by the “bloggers/vloggers” and how the blog site allowed people to air their views and experiences. How the blog site enabled them to show their talent and skills not just in the content but also in the presentation of the work and articles presented.    

One reason for my doing the presentation is I feel strongly about exchanging ideas with others and benefiting from each other’s experience and expertise in various areas. Meeting and discussing what an agency and people are doing can only help develop ideas and strategies for the benefit of everyone involved in the field of helping and empowering people to believe in themselves.

Finally a very big thank you to the people of the Metropolitan for inviting me and allowing me the time and the opportunity to show the skills of the contributors and the benefit of having access to a blog site.

   McTaggart