My first program, “Desert Tortoise.”
My first program was last night. I had run through it a couple of times by myself on the patio of the trailer, but never in front of an audience. Way different!
I arrived at the amphitheater at 6pm, an hour early. There are certain tasks that need to be performed to start up the machinery needed to put on the show. Doors unlocked, light turned on, the projector started, the laptop started so getting there early is necessary. I remembered all the start up sequences necessary and had things “up and running” within 20 minutes. So then it was just stand around a wait until 7pm.
Guests started showing up at about 6:50 and continued through my introduction speech. I was a little nervous, because it was my first evening program ever and I was not totally familiar with the equipment. The program went off without a hitch. For the most part, people got my humor and my choice of slides looked good on the screen. It just needed to be longer. The programs and usually about 40-60 minutes long and mine was closer to 30 minutes.
I am happy with the content and concept. I will just add more meat to the program. I had many questions after the program about various parts of the life of the desert tortoise. Volunteer B, who was my assistant, suggested that I use those questions to expand my talk. Our supervisor, Ranger S, loved my program but suggested that I expand on the emotional part of the desert tortoise’s life. One way that I hope to do this is with a video that I have received from the US Geological Survey showing a desert tortoise emerging from an egg. It will be a show-stopper if I can get it loaded into my Power Point program. (Easier said than done) It has to be in the right format to work and the formats I received are not.
Expanding my program explanations should help give the presentation more meat and length.
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