It’s nice when a plan starts to come together, one may even begin to believe that it was, err, pre-planned. But, as is almost always the case, plans take time to take shape, to develop and, in turn, to become some sort of reality. And, invariably, they bear a distant resemblance to what was originally conceived.
To be fair, the PPT slides which we have developed for the 2017 EAIR Forum presentation were drafted early on, indeed they helped to shape the paper, and they also drew heavily upon the original conference proposal. Turning back to these PPTs again, one sees the weaknesses in our initial efforts to say in a dozen or so slides just what it is that we have been doing across the past 15 months, and why, as well as what we see happening now, what we hope will take place next, etc.
Our EAIR presentation in early September is due to take half-an-hour in total, with twenty minutes spent on talking to/using these revised PPT slides, drawing out the main points of the paper, all the while answering a set of questions posed by the organisers, as well as anticipating/responding to those put down by colleagues in attendance. The guidance supplied by EAIR certainly helped to frame and focus what we want to say, and the resulting slides will also hopefully help to engage the audience, not just for the twenty minute presentation, but also for the ten minute Q&A session that will bring it to a close.
All in all, this has been a very interesting process, especially in terms of personal and professional development. The initial value will be seen early next month when it comes to how our presentation is executed, received and, in truth, with regard to what comes next for us with NStEP. If nothing else, it has certainly been very illuminating to be on this journey, and it is particularly nice to have the company of others while proceeding along this path.
2017 EAIR Forum presentation – FitzGerald & O’Sullivan
QA@NCI 