For the first time I had the chance to be the one showcasing my skills and work for over 150 industry guests at the Centre for Digital Media. I was used to be the one mingling and talking to people at events, but being the one showcasing has definitely changed my perspective for this kind of events.
The amount of preparation needed is greater than most people might think. For the presentation itself, it took my team, which was presenting Anthymn, two weeks of iterations and rehearsals to communicate our process as efficient as possible considering the time constrains. We got to a point where we were comfortable speaking about our process and happy with the information we were providing. Even though we were very well rehearsed, sometimes we were forced to improvise, such as the time that the presentation computer (which was a CDM computer) went to sleep mode and we had to input staff password to awaken the computer while we were still presenting. You can check out our presentation on the trimmed video below:
After the presentations were complete, everyone moved to the Hangar area, where all students had already setup two days before the showcase. We had to think about user flow, how the industry would move around the Hangar in a way that no one had a less privileged position than the others. We changed the layout at least 3 times until we were happy with the booths positioning.
At this stage, each student had its own personal booth showcasing all sorts of previous and ongoing projects. The intent of this showcase is to connect the students with the industry and possibly lead to future co-op positions, internships, freelance work, and possibly full time jobs in the future.
Bellow, a couple of photos taken by Daniel Fleming of my personal booth. I had 2 computers and 2 screens presenting videos, pictures and blog posts while talking to many interesting connections:
Bellow, a few pictures of the event taken by Alana Thorburn:
I had a really great time talking to many interesting people and made a lot of interesting connections which might lead to great opportunities in the future. Was a very instructional experience of professionalism and how to prepare for my own showcases in the future.
Hope you have enjoyed the read!