 | I was given the opportunity to present a seminar on The Clean Water Rule: Details and Legal Status this month. It was a challenge to compress over 200 years of history of the environmental regulations, along with past court cases explaining where we are today, combined with explaining the details of The Clean Water Rule. The icing on the cake, so to speak, was explaining the current legal status of this federal law in the court system – ALL within 60 minutes. Needless to say, I was hustling, but managed to hit the mark. |
In order to gain maximum attention and interest in what can be a rather difficult and complex subject to follow, I decided to incorporate an instant polling app within PowerPoint. I had seen something similar used at the first annual Women in the Workforce Conference (May 2015) in Fayetteville, AR, by the premier sponsor Rockfish.
Overall, I was very pleased with how the seminar went. I would say that the biggest challenge appeared to be getting the Poll Everywhere app to properly download and execute within the software where I was presenting the seminar. I arrived nearly 1-1/2 hours before the seminar began and the IT specialist started working on getting the Poll Everywhere software to work. In the end, we decided to use my laptop (where the Poll Everywhere app was working correctly) to display the presentation. My hat goes off to the IT specialist for getting it all to work! He did it with about 5 minutes to spare.
One interesting observation about using Poll Everywhere - I would estimate 33% of the seminar attendees participated in the poll questions. I would have expected more, but maybe it was too new to the seminar attendees and they did not feel compelled to participate.
Lastly, next time someone asks to assist me with forwarding the slide presentation (rather than using a “wheel-type” remote), TAKE THEM UP ON IT! Lesson learned…and I'm eating humble pie.
-JMB
Updated June 2017. Associated PDF of the powerpoint presentation was deleted.
Overall, I was very pleased with how the seminar went. I would say that the biggest challenge appeared to be getting the Poll Everywhere app to properly download and execute within the software where I was presenting the seminar. I arrived nearly 1-1/2 hours before the seminar began and the IT specialist started working on getting the Poll Everywhere software to work. In the end, we decided to use my laptop (where the Poll Everywhere app was working correctly) to display the presentation. My hat goes off to the IT specialist for getting it all to work! He did it with about 5 minutes to spare.
One interesting observation about using Poll Everywhere - I would estimate 33% of the seminar attendees participated in the poll questions. I would have expected more, but maybe it was too new to the seminar attendees and they did not feel compelled to participate.
Lastly, next time someone asks to assist me with forwarding the slide presentation (rather than using a “wheel-type” remote), TAKE THEM UP ON IT! Lesson learned…and I'm eating humble pie.
-JMB
Updated June 2017. Associated PDF of the powerpoint presentation was deleted.
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