01 Jul 2001 #0127.html

Presentation

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Dear Paul and Kate, Melanie and Jared, Bridget and Justin, Sara, Ben and Sarah, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt via hardcopy,

cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"This was one of those reoccuring weeks in my life, the week of the big presentation. Monday afternoon to Chroma, Tuesday morning to Woodside, Wednesday afternoon to Texaco, Wednesday evening to the Venturing Crew, Thursday afternoon to Peter Duncan, Friday to Bryan Bentz, and Saturday to Scott Lackey and Jim Jinright.

Guess I could stop here, since this summarizes my week. And I won't, specifically because I want to talk a little about what I have found to be the basis of a good presentation, and some of the things I am continuing to learn as I do more and different kinds of presentations. In Sunday School today we had a lesson on learning, and seeking wisdom. As I reread the part of the Doctrine & Covenants this lesson was based on, I was struck by how much it relates to giving a good presentation. So I am going to start this Thoughtlet by quoting from D&C 88:117-126, and putting in all caps those words related to my theme for today:

`Therefore, verily I say unto you, MY FRIENDS, CALL YOUR SOLEMN ASSEMBLY, as I have commanded you. And AS ALL HAVE NOT FAITH, SEEK YE DILIGENTLY and TEACH ONE ANOTHER WORDS OF WISDOM; yea, SEEK YE OUT OF THE BEST BOOKS WORDS OF WISDOM; SEEK LEARNING, EVEN BY STUDY AND ALSO BY FAITH. ORGANIZE YOURSELVES; PREPARE EVERY NEEDFUL THING; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God; that your incomings may be in the name of the Lord; that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord; that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord, with uplifted hands unto the Most High. Therefore, CEASE FROM ALL YOUR LIGHT SPEECHES, from all laughter, from all your lustful desires, from all your pride and light- mindedness, and from all your wicked doings. APPOINT AMONG YOURSELVES A TEACHER, and LET NOT ALL BE SPOKESMEN AT ONCE; but LET ONE SPEAK AT A TIME AND LET ALL LISTEN UNTO HIS SAYINGS, THAT WHEN ALL HAVE SPOKEN THAT ALL MAY BE EDIFIED BY ALL, and that every man may have an equal privilege. See that ye love one another; cease to be covetous; LEARN TO IMPART ONE TO ANOTHER as the gospel requires. Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful; RETIRE TO THEY BED EARLY, THAT YE MAY NOT BE WEARY; ARISE EARLY, THAT YOUR BODIES AND YOUR MINDS MAY BE INVIGORATED. And above all things, clothe yourselves with the bond of charity, as with a mantle, which is the bond of perfectness and peace. Pray always, that ye may not faint, until I come. Behold, and lo, I will come quickly, and receive you unto myself. Amen.'


So how does this scripture relate to a presentation? Let us look at the 16 sets of words I have capitalized in some more detail:

  1. MY FRIENDS: we always have a better chance of getting our message across if we are talking to people we like and who are our friends.
  2. CALL YOUR SOLEMN ASSEMBLY: a presentation implies that someone will be talking and others will be listening. This requires a degree of soberness, attention, concentration, i.e. solomnity.
  3. AS ALL HAVE NOT FAITH: if everyone the presentation believed what was going to be presented, there would be no need for the presentation. The presentation needs to be geared to those who do not know or believe the message of the presentation, i.e. those who do not have faith.
  4. SEEK YE DILIGENTLY: preparation is key for any worthwhile presentation, and this preparation requires seeking answers.
  5. TEACH ONE ANOTHER WORDS OF WISDOM: everyone is smarter than anyone, and so it is always good to have a team of people involved in preparing and reviewing a presentation and along the way teaching each other words of wisdom.
  6. SEEK YE OUT OF THE BEST BOOKS WORDS OF WISDOM: it has been said there is `nothing new under the sun,' and for any presentation, it is good to understand previous attempts to implement a similar idea, and their successes and their failures, that we might learn from the experience and wisdom of those who have gone before.
  7. SEEK LEARNING, EVEN BY STUDY AND ALSO BY FAITH: it is a good idea to have context and background and belief in the topics, material, content, and implications of our presentation.
  8. ORGANIZE YOURSELVES: a good presentation always involves many different components, and it takes effort to understand all of these different components and to organize ourselves.
  9. PREPARE EVERY NEEDFUL THING: for instance, the PC battery died in Tuesday's presentation to Woodside, and we had no backup hardcopy of the PowerPoint presentation, and ended up simply talking with markers at a whiteboard.
  10. CEASE FROM ALL YOUR LIGHT SPEECHES: usually it is appropriate to bring humor into a presentation, at the begining to break the ice, at various times to keep the audience's attention, and when the meat of the presentation is given, it is not based on light speeches.
  11. APPOINT AMONG YOURSELVES A TEACHER: this responsibility rotates. In the meetings this week, I was the teacher, and Sam LeRoy and Dick Coons were in two of the key presentations to fill in when I left something out, or to answer questions and to take their turn as the teacher.
  12. LET NOT ALL BE SPOKESMEN AT ONCE: the presentation audience can only listen to one person at a time, and by having an spokesman there is continuity in the presentation.
  13. BUT LET ONE SPEAK AT A TIME AND LET ALL LISTEN UNTO HIS SAYINGS, THAT WHEN ALL HAVE SPOKEN THAT ALL MAY BE EDIFIED BY ALL: it is always amazing to me how much there is to learn about virtually any topic. We can not learn if we are talking, unless we are listening to the spirit as it directs our words. The key is to listen to others that we may be edified.
  14. LEARN TO IMPART ONE TO ANOTHER: sometimes it is hard to speak up, especially if we are insecure or unsure of ourselves. However, as we learn to share with each other, we learn that we too have worthwhile things to impart to others.
  15. RETIRE TO THEY BED EARLY, THAT YE MAY NOT BE WEARY: it is often difficult for me to plan what needs to go into a presentation, and so often I find myself up late making final preparations. I've particularly been bad at this in regards to overseas trips, where I used staying up all night as an easy way to overcome jet lag. Taking this exception into account, it is a good idea to retire early the night before a major presentation so that we are well rested and alert to answer questions and give a good show to those attending our presentation.
  16. ARISE EARLY, THAT YOUR BODIES AND YOUR MINDS MAY BE INVIGORATED: Likewise, it is good to get up early in the morning, go for a run, exercise, eat a good breakfast, and store up the energy so our bodies and minds are invigorated.

There are a lot of sources we can go to learn how to give a good presentation. There are a lot of different sources in the scriptures. As I have gone through this exercise, based on the source I chose to use to describe what we need to do to give a good presentation, the thing that is amazing to me is that Joseph Smith was 27 years old, with about a 5th grade formal education, when he received the 141 verses of the 88th section of the Doctrine & Covenents in Kirtland, Ohio, and this Thoughtlet is based on only 10 of the 141 verses in this section of the D&C. These thoughts strengthen my belief, my testimony, that the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was outside of the capabilities of any man or men, and that the presentation was prepared by our creator, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I gave the lesson (presentation) for Family Home Evening last Sunday. I read the chapter in Love Languages on Spending Quality Time. Andrea said I read way too much. Oh well! We did have a pretty good discussion after I read the chapter. It kind of set the tone for my week. I had worked really hard for the presentation on Monday to Chroma. I called Peter Duncan first thing Monday morning, and was suprised to hear him say, `Roice, this has got too big.' In looking at last week's Thoughtlet, I realized I didn't mention that the new President of Chroma came over to the house for a barbeque dinner on Monday night with Dick Coons. Peter said Dick and I came across pretty strong to him. Oh well! So as I left Monday morning for the presentation, I told Andrea that it wasn't going to go anyplace, because it was going too fast for Peter. At the beginning of the meeting Don asked us three questions:

  1. What is Dynamic Resources' business model?
  2. What do we think Chroma Energy's business model is?
  3. How do we think these two models work together?

Dynamic is in the business to develop and sell CLPs (new exploration Concepts, Leads, and Prospects for a fee and an override or the equivalent. Chroma is in the same business, focused on using the Chroma Vision tools to interpret 3-D seismic. However, during the presentation we learned that Chroma is not in the business of selling Prospects. Rather, they partner with a company in a specific geographic area and then jointly develop Prospects in that area. We thought Chroma would be interested in selling our work Offshore Texas for a fee and an override. And they are not. Oh well! I guess the fact Chroma has just closed on $20 million in investment funding focused my attention on getting $400,000 for Dynamic. Not this time.

There were two specific things about the Presentation on Monday afternoon which went wrong. First, Dick asked for a confidentiality agreement before he showed any of his data, and I asked for it up front just before the meeting. It was impossible for Peter to sign the confidentiality agreement as written, and so we started the meeting off with a no. Once the first no has been said, it is easy to repeat `No' at each of the next steps in a presentation. Second, the PowerPoint presentation I gave did not work on their computer. It would not go into presentation mode, and so it always listed other stuff on the screen. Specifically it said there were a total of 87 slides in the presentation, and we got a lot of flack from Peter and from Don about the number of slides in our presentation. They said there should never be more than about 20 slides in a single sitting. Oh well! I was disappointed and wiped out when I got home, and ended up watching a movie on TV as a distraction.

Tuesday morning's presentation to Woodside Petroleum went much better. I was over at Sam LeRoy's office about 8:30 and we reworked the presentation we gave to Chroma, cutting it back from 87 slides to 35 slides. We got there early. They did not have a Zip drive, and so we ended up setting up the portable Power PC Roger Anderson gave me. The presentation started out with some mechanical problems. First the projector would not work with the Power PC, and so I started to give the presentation just on the PC to 4 Woodside professionals, with Dick Coons and Sam LeRoy sitting on the sides. Sam said I did a lot better on this presentation than at Chroma, specifically because I realized they could not read all of the text, and I was talking to them, looking them in the eyes, connecting, and not talking to the screen. Interesting insight to me. Then the Power PC died. The cable to charge the battery stopped working, and the battery was dead and we could not get it back up. I was about a third the way into the presentation when this happened. Talk about being frustrated. I continued to talk using a white board, and Sam was able to use a third computer to bring up an example of multivariate analysis results which greatly impressed them. In fact, they were sufficiently interested I raised the price for the Offshore Texas study from $400,000 to $500,000 on the fly. Part of my logic was I didn't expect them to be interested in the entire project anyway. They are interested. They are in the middle of a strategy planning session. They will get back to me in the next couple of weeks.

I left the meeting very upbeat. I drove from the Galleria area out to Sugar Land and Chroma's office to prepare for the Wednesday afternoon presentation to Texaco. The results of my work at Chroma had not come together near as fast nor as good as Peter Duncan, Dave Eichen, nor myself wanted. I worked very hard on Tuesday afternoon and until about 10:00 on Tuesday evening to prepare material for the Texaco presentation. It didn't come together and I was tired and frustrated when I got home in time to watch Jay Leno as a distraction. I got up early, and was back down in Sugar Land at 8:00 to finish preparing. The work did come together in time to print out a Power Point file and to get back up to the West Belt and Texaco's offices by 2:15 for a 2:30 meeting. Dave had cut a CD and Texaco did not have a PC nor a projector in the conference room we went to. Oh well! They gave us some new information, and then we pulled out the PowerPoint hardcopy and went through the different images. They were not that impressed with the presentation. I think I am going to swear off of PowerPoint presentations unless they are completely self contained. We finished up at 4:30 and I was back at the house by 5:45 after fighting traffic on I-10.

Alan Peterson and I team tagged a presentation to three of my Venturing Scouts on Genealogy on Wednesday evening. It was fun, and I think the scouts each got quite a bit out of it. It will probably be 50 years before we could know the impact of this presenation, and by then everyone will be in different places, so we will probably never know the real impact of this presentation. I've come to believe that of those few presentations which actually make a difference, this time lag is a common theme.

Thursday was spent at Chroma working on the Texco project. With the new information they provided Tuesday I was able to get a lot farther than I had for several weeks. However, in the afternoon, Peter had me come into his office and talk through what had happened, where I'm at, and what the next steps are. Even though it was a one on one discussion, it was very much a presentation. Specifically when as he said, `Roice, you are involved in a lot of things, and it is hard to get you to focus,' my cell phone rang, and he said `Case in point!' Oh well! We agreed I would give a status presentation to the Chroma Energy technical team on Tuesday afternoon next week, and we would jointly come up with a plan on how to best proceed.

Friday I spent the day at Interactive Interpretation & Training working on the offshore Texas stuff. I had planned to take the Metro Bus downtown. However, when I got on the bus the driver said they didn't have change, the sign said $2.00 and the bus driver said $3.50. I had stuck $1.00 in the slot, and since I didn't understand the presentation I just got off the bus and drove downtown. Audrey and Sara I need you guys to talk me through what is involved in riding Metro downtown. Bryan Bentz in Connecticut and I spent the day working together across the phone and e-mail on the Offshore Texas Project. I am very excited about how well it is coming together. I was there working on it until about 6:00 with Les Denham. Andrea and Matt and I collaborated via cell phone as I drove home, and I went straight to Cinemark and bought three tickets to Stephen Spilberg's new movie: A.I. Wierd and kinky in parts. It is very creative, and the designs are interesting. Ice ages do not last 2,000 years (Milankovich cycles are typically 10,000 years) and glaciers would take out old buildings, so he needs to learn more about geologic processes. However, the presentation is good, and I recommend you all see this movie, if for no other reason than it will set thinking in the same way `2001 A Space Odyssey' did for my generation back in 1969. As we left the theater Matt asked me `How did you like the movie?' I went into a big long discourse on people like Stephen Spilberg and me who are still trying to please their mothers and he said `I don't care about all of that stuff.' So I asked him how he liked the movie, and he said, `It made me sad. I almost cried.'

Saturday I finished up my report for Scott Lackey and Jim Jinright about the interpretation work I did for them in Denver on the 21st. The model I built turned out pretty neat, and I'm looking forward to their response to this presentation. It consists of marked transparency sheets, separated by stacks of transparency holders. There were four drillable leads identified on their property, one of which has not been tested. It will be interesting to see what the end results are in this area.

Saturday Ben and Sarah came down for one of Sarah's friends' sisters' weddings. We got to babysit Ethan for the first time. It was a lot of fun. He likes me (or as Sarah says, `He likes men.'). Matt, Ben, Sarah, Ethan, Whizzer, and I all went swimming in the pool. It was fun. First time I've dunked Ben in a long time, and he dunked me several times. Sarah noticed I had cut down the little three branched pine tree next to the pool earlier in the morning. It died. I remember when we were trying to get rid of the weeds in that area and it was recommended that we kill the tree and plant a new one, and when I refused, the man helping said, `Why is it such an issue for you if that tree is killed?' I explained to Sarah that the three pine trees at the end of the yard represented Roice, Ben, and Paul, and the little interesting tree represented Rob. When Sarah asked which tree was Ben I said, `I don't remember, I just know it was the one that reached the ground in an ice storm and didn't break.' The good news in cutting down the tree is that I figured out a way to `keep it.' Andrea and I got out a level, and we marked it so I cut the tree branches off at the same height. This will allow me to build a seat that can fit on the three branches, and we will have a chair, all in the spirit of Phil Siverstein's `The Giving Tree.' It was fun to play with Ethan, and to look to his future. It was also scary. We ended up watching TV while we were feeding him and watching him explore our world. I had never seen The Untouchable's, and I particularly noticed that when a man was pushed off of a roof, Ethan became intent on watching it, and even though I turned his head away, he wiggled and got right back to see the splat. Even though it didn't turn out like I expected, I'm so glad I raised all of you kids before all of the stuff was on TV that is now so readily available in our living room. And just think how conservative I am compared to most of the world, in terms of what I will let into my house! Ethan is such a good baby. He is so even tempered, so sensitive to when big mean Ben would beat up on Matt (maybe it was just Matt's screaming). Ethan eats well and everything he can put his hands on, loves his puppies, explores like a geophysisicist, has a wonderful smile, and was a lot of fun. He, like I hope and pray each of you will always do, is going to do a wonderful job of giving a presentation."

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

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Copyright © 2001 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.