Please notice this was first posted in the period 2012-2014 and can be outdated
At 8:30AM, on Monday the 23rd of April, the first workshop at Sasin kicked off. In the coming 2 days we would get all the information we needed to be able to give a persuasive presentation, a workshop given by Kathy O’Brien of Red Shoe Communications. She would cover several elements of a presentation; from tone of voice, to adjusting the content to the audience, to making eye contact with your audience in such a way that they pay attention to what you are saying and not file complaints at the local police station afterwards.
Presenting is something you need to practice to learn, and this is where panic started to break out in some corners of the large hall we were in. Not everybody was ready to speak up yet in front of so many unknown fellow students which became apparent when about 10% of the attending students, almost all the foreign students to make it even a bigger contrast, answered over 90% of the questions asked.
Who would have thought I would ever volunteer to giving a presentation to a large group of unknown people? (thats me on the big screen when we reviewed my presentation)
At certain points during the day we had small practice runs in groups of 4 or 5 people and at the end there was even the opportunity to give a speech to the total class of 2012 consisting of about 75 people. And I have to say that I found this course a very useful experience, especially this early of the academic year, since these skills are necessary for the coming two years and the years following in corporate life. Apparently not everybody agreed with this since the attendance rate dropped significantly on the second day now that people knew they would have to speak in public or in smaller groups. In Europe similar courses would run an easy 1,000 euro’s a day, and employees would line up to follow them, but this is Thailand and not everybody seems that eager to work on their weaknesses.
At the end of both day 1 and 2 of the workshop we ended up in a smaller room on the same floor to prepare a performance, some sort of comedy act, we will be required to perform coming weekend when we go on the orientation trip to the Dusit Thani hotel in Hua Hin for 3 days. More about that later…
Preparing for the performance with group E.