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My Presentation Went Well
Nov. 5th, 2008 11:36 pmI gave a presentation today on the basics of Polyamory at UCF. It was scheduled to start at 6:45 and I had planned to arrive at 6:00 to get into the room as early as possible to set up and be relaxed and waiting by showtime.
Thanks to traffic, I didn't even arrive until 6:45.
Luckily, we lost our room, so the group hosting the lecture was standing around in the lobby of the Student Union, trying to get some building flunky to give us meeting space when I arrived. I don't know how or why we lost the room that the group uses every Wednesday evening at this same time slot, but we did. So no one noticed that I was late (or at least, none of the audience members did).
So, the house-guy offered us a room that was twice as large as their normal room with the caveat that their people be allowed to clean up the snack table at the back of the room (left over from the previous gathering) during our meeting. Of course we agreed, not having any other room to fall back on. This room even left their wireless microphones, so I had audio (which was a concern in their usual room - they don't always get audio equipment and when they do, it doesn't always work).
So, I plugged in my laptop to the projector, got the PowerPoint presentation started, cliped on the lav mic and away we went.
Everyone came up to tell me that it went well, and a few of those people I even trust to tell me the truth. Although it was a scripted speech (I opted for a script to make sure I didn't forget anything important, as opposed to just notes or memorized or winging it), people seemed to think I delivered it well and the handful of jokes I threw in got laughs.
Then came the Q&A. I was anxiously awaiting the hardball questions dealing with "morality" and arguments over my claims of safer sex practices being more prevalent in the poly community than in the public at large, but none of the questions were asked as an attack. I did get one orgy question, but only one, and I did get a "what about the children" question, and I even got a "why more than one?" question, but everyone seems to think I handled them well enough, although I did come up with things I should have said, much later.
Someone asked if orgies were common, and I responded with "not nearly as common as some of us would like", followed by an explanation that, since it's not all about casual sex, you have to find partners who A) like you, B) like your other partners and C) have a compatible orienation, and that's much more rare than some of us might wish.
The children question was a generic "how do families handle having kids, who is the 'parent'" kind of question, but it seemed to me that it was an honest curiousity about logistics, rather than a moralistic harm point of view. So I explained that there were 2 answers to her question. The first was that some poly families don't want children. The other was that, historically, familes have always had several adults to help with the childrearing, such as aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc., so who is the bio parent isn't really a big issue and that poly people were just as likely to handle their sex lives with discretion as mono people were. This was the question I ended up coming up with more examples for later on.
Then there was the inevitable guy who asked "I've already found The One, so why would someone want more than one?", to which I responded "why not?". I then went onto explain that some people do find their romantic attention being kept and maintained by a single person and that's fine for them, but many of us do not.
So, I think it went well, and people came up to me afterwards with a few more questions, but mostly to thank me and say that they learned a lot and they liked how I explained things (it's amazing how tone and vocal inflection can change my pragmatic writing style from aggressive to simply practical!). A few people asked for how to get in touch with me afterwards, including one girl who was poly but had no idea there was a poly community in the area.
I'm hoping to convert my PowerPoint into a flash video with an audio recording of my speech to play on my website. Also,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thisisjessa had the whole thing recorded on video, so maybe I'll get a copy of that too. I enjoyed giving the speech and several people have expressed interest in hearing me speak again. So if anyone has a group that would like to hear an introduction to Polyamory, and I can reasonably find a way to attend, I'd be more than happy to come speak.
Thanks to traffic, I didn't even arrive until 6:45.
Luckily, we lost our room, so the group hosting the lecture was standing around in the lobby of the Student Union, trying to get some building flunky to give us meeting space when I arrived. I don't know how or why we lost the room that the group uses every Wednesday evening at this same time slot, but we did. So no one noticed that I was late (or at least, none of the audience members did).
So, the house-guy offered us a room that was twice as large as their normal room with the caveat that their people be allowed to clean up the snack table at the back of the room (left over from the previous gathering) during our meeting. Of course we agreed, not having any other room to fall back on. This room even left their wireless microphones, so I had audio (which was a concern in their usual room - they don't always get audio equipment and when they do, it doesn't always work).
So, I plugged in my laptop to the projector, got the PowerPoint presentation started, cliped on the lav mic and away we went.
Everyone came up to tell me that it went well, and a few of those people I even trust to tell me the truth. Although it was a scripted speech (I opted for a script to make sure I didn't forget anything important, as opposed to just notes or memorized or winging it), people seemed to think I delivered it well and the handful of jokes I threw in got laughs.
Then came the Q&A. I was anxiously awaiting the hardball questions dealing with "morality" and arguments over my claims of safer sex practices being more prevalent in the poly community than in the public at large, but none of the questions were asked as an attack. I did get one orgy question, but only one, and I did get a "what about the children" question, and I even got a "why more than one?" question, but everyone seems to think I handled them well enough, although I did come up with things I should have said, much later.
Someone asked if orgies were common, and I responded with "not nearly as common as some of us would like", followed by an explanation that, since it's not all about casual sex, you have to find partners who A) like you, B) like your other partners and C) have a compatible orienation, and that's much more rare than some of us might wish.
The children question was a generic "how do families handle having kids, who is the 'parent'" kind of question, but it seemed to me that it was an honest curiousity about logistics, rather than a moralistic harm point of view. So I explained that there were 2 answers to her question. The first was that some poly families don't want children. The other was that, historically, familes have always had several adults to help with the childrearing, such as aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc., so who is the bio parent isn't really a big issue and that poly people were just as likely to handle their sex lives with discretion as mono people were. This was the question I ended up coming up with more examples for later on.
Then there was the inevitable guy who asked "I've already found The One, so why would someone want more than one?", to which I responded "why not?". I then went onto explain that some people do find their romantic attention being kept and maintained by a single person and that's fine for them, but many of us do not.
So, I think it went well, and people came up to me afterwards with a few more questions, but mostly to thank me and say that they learned a lot and they liked how I explained things (it's amazing how tone and vocal inflection can change my pragmatic writing style from aggressive to simply practical!). A few people asked for how to get in touch with me afterwards, including one girl who was poly but had no idea there was a poly community in the area.
I'm hoping to convert my PowerPoint into a flash video with an audio recording of my speech to play on my website. Also,
thisisjessa had the whole thing recorded on video, so maybe I'll get a copy of that too. I enjoyed giving the speech and several people have expressed interest in hearing me speak again. So if anyone has a group that would like to hear an introduction to Polyamory, and I can reasonably find a way to attend, I'd be more than happy to come speak.
