I am currently one of the faculty members for the VLA Presentation Academy. The Presentation Academy is a hybrid experience that: matches prospective presenters together for panels and co-presentations, assists people in writing successful conference proposals (VLA or other), provides Webinars on effective presentation design, and gives feedback to participants on presentations.
We held our initial meeting at UVA on March 2. We had 35 attendees for the half day event. This day was focused on brainstorming activities, and activities focused on creating effective proposals.
After this workshop, participants could submit proposals to us that we would then offer feedback on. Many of these proposals were submitted to the VLA annual conference. Presentation Academy proposals had an acceptance rate of 92%. In June and July we offered webinars on Designing Effective Presentations and Engaging Audiences. Candice Benjes-Small and I presented the webinar on Designing Effective Presentations and Rebecca K. Miller and Nathan Flinchum presented the webinar on Engaging Audiences. The Designing Effective Presentations PPT can be seen below.
Another cohort of the Presentation Academy began at the 2015 VLA annual conference. Our second meeting of that cohort is in March 2016 in Staunton, VA.
We also offered an ALA webinar on our experience planning and facilitating the Presentation Academy. The webinar can be seen here.
We are also scheduled to hold pre-conferences at the upcoming Tennessee Library Association Conference and the joint Maryland/Delaware Library Association Conference.
