Presentations

As a student still completing my undergrad, presentations are relevant to my present place in the Nutrition field. I will be presenting a poster in my fourth year, and perhaps a few more presentations will come up along the way to graduating. I have always been a fan of presenting in front of an audience, with the new techniques I have learned in ALES 204, I look forward to applying these skills as the next opportunity presents itself.

It is during my fourth year capstone course that I will produce my first, professional research poster. Posters are an effective way of presenting information to a large conference of people. They must captivate the eye, and summarize your objective and findings in an attractive, direct and complete manner. This requires that you have subjectively summarized your work, leaving only the main points on the poster, while including enough for the reader to have a thorough understanding of what exactly it is that you did. Information must then be organized, and presented in an appealing manner so to catch the eye of every passerby. What's excellent about this lengthy, precise process is that by the end of it you will know every inch of your work that when asked, you shouldn't hesitate an instant before engaging your audience in a more detailed conversation of your research!

Powerpoint or computer-mediated presentations are a very common way of presenting information. Here, presenters must be careful to avoid making their presentations too chalk-full of text, irrelevant data or hard to interpret data. If the wrong colors are chosen for text and background, this could also lead to a disastrous, ineffective presentation. Little factors, such as font type and slide backgrounds are just as important to the presentation as the factual texts on each slide. If you can master the art of both, you are on your way to being the deliverer of a great presentation.

The field of nutrition is a very dynamic industry. With ongoing scientific research, new realizations and proposed hypotheses, people involved in the industry need effective ways of relaying information amongst themselves and with others of different fields. Whether it be via powerpoint, Slideshare or a poster, professionals in my field need to be coherent and successful when it comes to delivering a presentation.