Getting The Most Out Of Your SME Membership

Editor's Notes

• #2: Last updated on 10/03/08 Customize this slide with your photo if available and your name, title, company and/or SME affiliation. In fact, as an effective presenter, you will customize this presentation to fit the previous knowledge/experience of the audience and the goals you have for the presentation. Give some thought on what you want people to know or more importantly, to do when your presentation is done – and then customize it to accomplish those goals. While this slide is up get to know your audience. Depending on the audience you may want to ask either or all of the following questions by a show of hands: How many people have joined or been involved in a technical community? How many people have been involved at a local level by attending two or more chapter meetings? How many people contribute to or are involved in the SME Education Foundation (SME-EF)? All three kinds of engagement in SME are great. For many years, people tended to experience SME in one way or the other with little interplay. Inertia keeps us in our comfort zones where we are already familiar. But our fellow SME members have been at work to change that and give us a better range of opportunities. These boundary crossing activities offer the member the ability to leverage their activity and gain additional benefits or knowledge than what was traditionally available in the individual types of engagement. At the end of the presentation are some additional slides that you may choose to move into your presentation or keep to answer more detailed questions about the volunteer structures and the activities of the SME Education Foundation. Finally, here are some simple tips on modifying the presentation if necessary. Note – these instructions are for PowerPoint 2002 – your version may vary. The slides placed after the closing slide are “hidden” so that they do not appear if you run the slide show. If you are going to put them into your presentation, use “View…Slide Sorter” on the menu and then drag/drop the slide to the position you want it. You will also need to right click on the slide thumbnail on the left side of your screen and select “Hide Slide” to unhide it. Some of the slides are set up with “Custom Animation” to transition individual lines or sections. If you want to remove some of these, right click on the slide and select “Custom Animation”. Click on the desired animation and click remove. Clicking “Play” will let you see it with the changes done automatically, clicking “Slide Show” will let you run that slide as if you were in the middle of your presentation.