To be honest, I was a little nervous going into our presentation. However, it was a healthy nervousness. Each member had practiced their own parts of the presentation and we were all confident we would have a great presentation, we were just unsure as to how Rachel might perceive it.
We agreed during my practice presentation that we would use my slide show as our group presentation format with each member adding their parts to the slide show. I think we did a great job of setting up what we were doing and why exactly we were doing it. I think coming to Rachel with suggestions as to how we can make their website, newsletter and flyer better instead of telling her why they “sucked” was a better approach. From my practice presentation, I remember Dr. Wharton explaining that the creator of the website might be in the room and temper how we discuss it. Turns out, Rachel was that person. While she didn’t exactly create the site, it falls under her current scope of work with the Center for Civic Innovation.
The best part of our presentation was her reaction to the newsletter suggestions. Not only was she impressed, but she expressed a willingness to try them out on the next news letter. I think this was a great indicator that we are on the right track. In our follow up, I would like to know if she indeed attempted to apply our newsletter suggestions. She also agreed that a smaller flyer similar to the prototype we provided would be great, but she wanted admitted that it definitely wasn’t finished, but she could see the direction we were heading in. She expressed that she is not a “micro manager” so she will be letting us figure somethings out on our own, which to me is great. This will give us a chance to work and learn ourselves as well as hopefully build up our confidence.
As far as content is concerned, she seemed more pensive. She doesn’t want to get rid of content and is curious as to how our content reorganization will look. While she was not able to meet with us during class today, we hope we can meet her Thursday during class hours and receive more feedback. I’m curious to see if the CEO or creative director have either seen heard about our presentation. I expect that Rachel will also be working closely with these two positions so hopefully we are all on the same page or at least not too far apart as far as our future scope of work is concerned.
