Please excuse me if I brought up this topic before, it is an aspect of our activities that frequently generates concern.

Programs and presentations are a central part of most railroad enthusiast activities and one of the most visible means of conveying information to our members and the public. But there seems to be very little activity aimed at sharing knowledge that could make them better. I see very few clinics or discussions of this topic at national conventions or annual meetings, etc. either in the preservation or railroad history worlds. Are we doing this so well that there is no need to improve?

A quick checklist from a number of events I attended over the last few months showed: (1) Some presentations that lacked organization or did not flow properly. (2) Slide-Music programs with no supporting information at all, no locations, no dates, no photo credits, etc. The presenter knew all this, but didn't share it with anybody else. (3) Electronic presentations with image handling and scanning problems like Moire' patterns. (4) Common layout errors, for example, programs with subtitles and callouts at the bottom of the screen where people in the back rows can't see them. (5) Programs with really basic image presentation problems like endlessly repetitive views of one type of equipment from similar angles.

Is anybody else concerned about this area of activity? If not, I apologize in advance for wasting your time reading this.

MX

I think you bring up a valid point. I would expect that the main problem is that most of us have had little or no training in preparing and presenting programs. Don't know much about graphics, imaging, pesentation software like Slide Show, a just plain hoqw to put a "show" on. We just muddle through it.

Maybe they could publish "Presentations for Dummies."

I worked for a company once that offered a self taught program called "Effective Presntations." Mostly about content and how to present it, but not much on technical aspects. I took the course many years ago and still use some of the things I learned.

It might be a good think for a seminar at a meeting or convention. Have an "expect" teach us how.

My 2 cents

Bill

Bill, thanks for your comment. It is good to know there are others out there who are concerned with the quality of information presentations.

Electronic presentations in PowerPoint or ProShow have been the standard in business for more than a decade now. They have tremendous potential not only as tools for narrated programs, but also as the medium for self running programs in individual kiosks or group viewing areas.

I was curious why I am seeing so little emphasis being placed on developing and training people in this technology when it is one of the most cost effective ways of delivering information. An autorun PowerPoint program is much quicker and less expensive to produce than a videotape. It can also be quickly and easily edited to suit the needs of individual events and presentation situations.

Unfortunately in far too many cases the best use an organization can find for PowerPoint is to show a printed version of text while the presenter reads you exactly the same thing that is on the screen (like the typical Human Resources Department session on employee benefits). When an entire presentations is done in this kind of simultaneous "read and listen" format, is all too often for the benefit of the narrator rather than the audience. It is an indication that the presenter would be unable to do the program without detailed notes.

MX...You again make a valid point. Watching a Power Point like the typical "HR benfits presentation" is just plain boring. However, I have seen some that were a compliment to the speaker's presentation and helped visualize what was being presented, such as maps, a scene etc. Main point is that it was a complement that helped illustrate...not just boring reading the notes.

I dabbled with Power Point and created what you could call an essay on the abandoned ROW of the AB&C (ACL/SCL) from Bessener,Al to Parkwood, AL. I walked the entire length (about 6 miles), took pictures of what remained (bridges, abutments, mile posts, spurs, etc). I also talked to some old folks that live along the ROW and got some neat stories from those who remembered the old AB&C. I put it all on Power Point with written narration. It can be viewed like reading an article in a magazine. My only problem was being able to get a good map into it. I put a copy of it in our museum library. I know I could have made it better, but my knowledge of PP & graphics is limited.

Sorry for the ramble. My point is as I said before we need some workshops, sharing of knoweledge in our groups, etc.

How many groups have a roster of their members that shows what some of them have expertise in? We don't. I think that would be a good start.

Bill

Bill, expanding on your comment - how many railroad related organizations keep any kind of a database of the programs and presentations that have been done by their members and are available as resources for showing at events? I know of only one that actually keeps a database - the NMRA (National Model Railroad Association). I don't think any of the railroad enthusiast or preservation groups has ever developed such a listing, although it would seem that NRHS might derive the most benefit from such an effort. The closest thing to it is an archive maintained by the Amherst Railway Society (a sponsor of this site) on their website that lists the programs that have been hosted at past meetings:

http://www.amherstrail.org/archive.html

Note that if the program presenter provided pictures or a writeup, the folks at Amherst leave those posted as part of the archive so they are available for future reference.

The lack of listings of what has been done and been presented gets kind of amazing when you consider that this is all supposed to be related to HISTORY and showing programs is a central part of so many groups' activities. So many of them are preoccupied with worship of the "past" yet many of them don't bother to keep a running history of what has been done for their own meetings by their own members. How many people want to put in a lot of preparation work or travel long distances to do programs for showings at special events when they know everything is going in the trash bin (or the deleted items file) the day afterwards.

MX

The "devil in the details" is that, just like some people have a natural knack for mechanical things and some should never be let anywhere near a tool, some people have a natural "eye" for photography, writing, and presentation, and some don't--and furthermore, some can take great photos but put on a cr@ppy slide show. Furthermore, much like the people on "American Idol" who are convinced they are great singers but actually stink, some people can't be told that their technique is just inferior.

One example of a terrific presentation I saw was given by Eric Levin on the restoration of PRR E8s 5809 and 5711. He had all the photos lined up in a folder on the laptop, and seamlessly progressed from photo to photo, explaining what was done and why. When someone had a question, Levin could instantly go back several photos to a relevant photo if needed. If the show went a little long, he could skip over more "redundant" photos as needed. Most importantly, he was a professional at locomotive restoration as well as being knowledgeable and comfortable with the laptop and projector--no fumbling around with upside-down slides or showing the wrong show, as you might imagine the boss on the TV show "The Office" doing.

A good presenter is comfortable with public speaking, and is familiar and comfortable with the tools he needs to use, just like a competent machinist or engineer. Thanks to modern technology, anyone out there can produce a video or presentation--look at the proliferation of railfan video producers out there--but to produce a worthwhile presentation, you need talent, and talent willing to put in real effort.

If you think about this, this is the perfect role for the younger generation of volunteers, the young brats hanging around tired of being told to scrape rust off the window frames. Hey, you may find the new online webmaster in that same crowd of wet, worthless young whippersnappers IF you ask nicely!

Some good photographers are not good caption writers or public speakers. They think that the music video slide show is heaven's gift to get them around their stage fright.

Excellent points brought up here by Sandy and Jim. I have viewed a lot of slide music shows where you are given almost no information about where and when the photos were taken. Some of these are a selection of songs you could listen to at home, with a couple hundred slides you learn nothing about.

That's entertainment? Maybe. That's a presentation? Well just barely.

I have seen a few digital slide music presentations that had complete location information added outside the picture area, which is easy to do since scans of slides do not take up the full height of a typical 1024x768 screen. These captions are not very distracting but they need to be short so you can read them quickly as the images go by.

And I have seen a few (very few) digital slide music programs were the slides were grouped into "chapters", each with a nice text introduction. This is very easy to do in PowerPoint. If you do this by location, this takes care of most of the captioning problem. I have also seen one program that was a mix, certain chapters were identified at the beginning as being in one location, while others were traveling around the railroad and the slides had individual location captions.

I am going to plead guilty here and admit that I have done a couple of slide music programs, but I hate showing them. To me, it is a waste of time and effort to do a long drive just to say "hello" and then hit "enter" on the computer without doing any live narration.

A little secret here: The "create a photo album" feature of PowerPoint allows you to set up the image side of one of these image and music programs in maybe......sixty seconds, provided you have everything in a folder and labeled in proper order to start with. It imports the images and pastes them into the individual slides in the proper order by their alphanumeric name, then it sizes them to the screen automatically. Arranging the cues to the music and timing the slides takes about thirty minutes more.

MX

But there's the other extreme:
The carousels loaded with a shot of EACH AND EVERY SD40-2 owned by Conrail/C&NW/whoever, in numerical order..... "now, you'll see that by this 1985 shot, the 3-chime Leslie air horn had been replaced by a Nathan K5LA.... " "And someone changed out the battery box door, too....."

And actually, my favorite criticism of a lot of these musically-oriented shows is their heavy dependence upon train-themed bluegrass. Mel Patrick did some spectacular night-photo shows using the music of Enya, and a couple of his friends have followed suit. I've always wanted to take a certain few pieces of music and shoot photos to match the music--in effect, making a "music video" for the song. In one or two cases, I've done so.

BUT WHO IS YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE? Railfans? Why bother, we're "cheapskates" and more trouble than we're worth. Travel agents? The historical society? The local civic organization? Potential donors? Politicians?

The most desirable target is to obtain "hits" outside the perimeter of your own organization, something that some groups have difficulty doing. If your events and presentations are attracting a portion of the general public as well as some professional railroaders, you are doing something right and should continue in that direction. If all that are showing up are the "usual suspects", then you are probably not getting the job done well enough.

Of course in many cases where groups are given the opportunity to host presentations that might attract some interest from "outside the fence", they are unable to generate adequate publicity for it in the outside world, so it ends up just being shown to the regular members.

MX

It is going to be very interesting to watch future developments and the mix of program offerings at the Tri-State Chapter of NRHS over the next couple of years. This is a group that met for three decades at a high security business complex that required advance lists of meeting attendees, and in recent years the host even required photographs of everyone attending the meetings. Despite these drawbacks the group survived and maintained a large membership. Tri-State recently left that location and has obtained the use of an excellent auditorium at a local museum. For the first time in many years they are meeting at a location that is readily accessible and now have the opportunity to promote their programs and events to the general public. From what I have heard so far, they are going a good job of "getting the word out", and there may be an opportunity for other groups to learn from the effort.

But is this even an area of concern for most RYPN participants? Programs and presentations are a major component of the image this industry and hobby present to the public. But when you look at the low number of viewings this string gets compared with recently posted news items, it would appear that very few people are interested in issues that directly affect their ability to attract the attention of the public and appeal to potential new members. So maybe your organizations are all doing just fine in this area, and I shouldn't be concerned about it?