Stage: Initial draft >> Re-drafting

Progress to date: Slides drafted, two practice runs presenting to an audience.

One week to go until my conference presentation.  I’ve been busy wrapping up teaching and marking commitments, so I haven’t had time to log as much of the recent presentation developments as I would like – rectifying that now!

Last Thursday, I had my first practice run with an audience.  It was nice to throw the ideas out there in front of a group of sport science researchers from a variety of disciplines.  The presentation was slightly over time.  Key feedback was to emphasise and iterate the “so what?” messages, and to provide more background on why the T2minute method provides value over and above what current training load measures can do.

We had another practice run yesterday, which was an improvement on the first – always nice to be progressing!  Still over my allotted time (I’ll be given 8 mins on the day, but spoke for 9 mins yesterday), so I’ve got to make some decisions about what is most important to convey in the short time span that I have.  Happy with how my slides are looking at this stage; only small changes to make from here I should think.

Slides in progress…

Setting practice run dates always helps me to get my butt into gear.  In a strange way, I almost like giving a half-finished presentation.  Of course it’s scary to throw my ideas out into the world for criticism, when they are but saplings and are nowhere near fully formed.  But I think embracing that fear and seeking out that challenge has helped me improve my capacity to take on feedback, to quickly re-draft, and in turn, more quickly produce a finished piece of work with high quality.