I am needing to sum FIRST robotics up in one power point slide and i am having a hard time doing it. I was wondering if anyone had any example they would like to share
I don’t have anything handy, but the most important thing to consider as you do this (or select something) is your target audience. Is this being presented to students, parents, school administration, likely mentors, or likely sponsors (or someone else I missed)? The emphasis, at least, will change based on the target audience.
Also, does this have to be a “static” slide? Can it have animations and/or video embedded?
How is the slide being presented, who is your audience?
What sort of message do you want to get across with your slide? There are a lot of aspects to FIRST, you’d do well to focus on one specific message than try to capture everything.
I am presenting during a rather large meeting at work. This is just a quick over view of FRC to get people excited about FIRST and hopefully come to a follow-up meeting. I will have only about 3 min to present and only allowed one slide
Are you looking to gain mentors for a specific team, or for a region, or volunteers for an event?
What does work do, are you an engineering company or something?
A slide about robots can get engineers hooked…
If I were doing this, I would address these main questions:
What is FIRST Robotics competition? (Don’t need to touch much on all of FIRST cause thats not the point of your presentation)
Why are you/your team a part of FRC? (Mention briefly any stories or stuff like that)
Who is your team? (Don’t go on about numbers and stats, cause while important that can take away from the key message)
How can they help? (The worst thing I see in presentations like these is that they leave the audience in a state of confusion as to why youre presenting. Whether you’re looking for mentors, or sponsorship, or whatever be clear about that at the end)
A presentation done right can sum up FIRST in 30 seconds. If I were to do this I would start by addressing each of those questions by talking for 60 seconds, record myself, write down major points I highlight and cut out the rest/add stuff I missed (yes I know 60*4 is not 3 minutes, its so you can cut down after the fact). Your slide could easily just be these questions, it could also highlight some answers to them, the key is to minimize text on the slide and maximize how much you’re saying, which is just general presentation advice that applies here.
Obviously you will have different answers to these questions, and you will likely want to tweak the questions as well, but by dialing in the specific questions you want to address in your presentation you will have a much easier time answering them.
If the follow-up meeting is to get people engaged as mentors, then you want to talk about the benefits of being a mentor. Obviously working with kids, getting to help build a cool robot… but there’s also professional networking, skills development (technical skills for business minded people, soft skills, like communication, for engineers), leadership and management development. So much of what a mentor (especially a relatively young one) can learn and experience working with a team can play right back into their own development at work, it’s really amazing.
I asked a similar question in this thread recently. Hopefully some of those descriptions can help you out.
If I were giving a 1 slide, 3 minute presentation about FRC at work, I’d start with the 10,000 foot view and work my way to the 10 foot view.
Globally, FIRST does this. Part of this is FRC. FRC has this many teams worldwide, in the US, in Illinois, in this area etc. These teams only survive because of mentors and corporate sponsorship.
This/these is/are the team(s) we sponsor, this is the number of students / schools.
We want mentors for this many hours per week (insert low number), for 6 weeks. Get them in the door, the robot will hook them.
I did a similar presentation at work to my department (~60 people, mostly S&T) on the eve of Bayou 2014 (Aerial Assist), but I had about 15 minutes, no particular limit on slides, and incorporated a demo with our first ever prototype/practice robot, “Woody”. (His chassis incorporated the finest KND2x4 technology.) I spent almost half the time on the demo, continuing with the sales pitch as I drove around picking up that huge ball and tossing it against the wall or ceiling or into the audience. Unintentionally scaring the bejezus out of my division secretary halfway through the demo wasn’t the brightest move professionally, but it helped the pitch.
Anyway, back to your problem! Let me repeat my second question from above: Does this have to be a static slide, or will it be running in Power Point or a similar dynamic software package? If the latter, I have done “animated slides” which take two or three minutes to run (sometimes on a clock, sometimes on clicks) which present four to ten main bullet points, each of which uses up most or all of the screen for ten to twenty seconds as it gives “enhancing” info or graphics, then retreats to “just” a bullet point. If you do this sort of hack/cheat, make sure that your final state is that bullet list, so that if someone prints it out, it covers the scope of your talk if not the depth. Also, include your “speech” as “speaker notes” so that anyone who gets that “one slide” digitally might get a clue as to what went on.
Edit: Perhaps end with something like this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a3/47/77/a34777a122e9f7b3ac062583c48b11c9.gif
Decide what you want from your audience (I’m assuming that you are “selling”. and not “buying”).
Craft a presentation that will make them want to give you what want (because of what they need, not what you need), and don’t be shy about asking (ask explicitly, and pass around a sign up sheet, or tell them who to make the check out to).
You can’t sum up FRC in one slide, but you can accomplish your (short-term) goal using one slide during three minutes.
That short term goal might just be getting a strong commitment to learn more (maybe immediately after the full presentation ends (maybe in an adjacent room full of shiny things, contagiously-enthusiastic students, and delicious snacks)).
Blake
PS:
Carry a handheld shiny thing to hold and/or pass around the room. Maybe it shoots nerf balls (hat can be redeemed for prizes) at the audience. Point to it and say “This is FRC, but it’s not all of FRC. …”.
While you are talking, have students toss a few tee-shirts to raffle winners (give out tickets as people enter the room).
Only put a picture (maybe a simple collage) on your slide. The picture’s job is to be the eye-candy that will make the audience want to learn more. You are the presentation. The slide is just the background image behind you.
Plant co-conspirators in the audience who will shout out answers to your questions?
Be memorable! Have fun!
Just show one of the videos FIRST has out there for hype/recruitment. The one with Morgan Freeman is good. a bit long for 3 min but there are other ones too.
How would you show basketball in one slide?
Cooking in one slide?
Scouting in one slide?
Medicine in one slide?
Think about how you would frame these things, and that will lead you to how you will frame your FIRST in one slide.
QFT
Bold by me
I’ll echo what has already been said, but also include a hard example of what I did when I went around recruiting new mentors. I did it at about 6 meetings with only 10 or so people in each meeting, so it was a lot more intimate which probably led to some of its success.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw2H3B-6kxLPdHVmSUNoZm1ZaGc should have an example of what I did at work. It’s obviously more in depth than what you can do within your constraints, but I would in particular look at modifying/updating/combining slide 3 and 7. You may try to verbally cover things in slide 7 only? I’d also see how much you can cover from slide 4, 9, and 10.
Obviously all of that is too much. Pick and choose what you want people to remember in particular based on your target audience and short term goals and make sure that gets up on the slide. Don’t rush too much through the material because it’ll be forgotten or not really even heard in the first place.
And good luck!