Tatiana's presentation for Seedy Saturday

[Tania]

I was asked to talk about our Seed bank and Tatiana's TOMATObase website and about tomato varieties.

Here is a draft of my presentation, still in progress. I need to polish it by Friday this week, and I would welcome any feedback - what you liked and what you did not like about it - this will help me tremendously to make it worthwhile for people who will come to listen.

Thank you!

Tatiana

[Doug9345]

It looks very good. I just want to say your English is very good, no one would know that it wasn't you native language from reading anything you wrote.

[paulgrow]

Very Nice.
Lots of good information, great pictures.
Need to make this a sticky for reference.

[surf4grrl]

It looks fantastic! Congrats! As someone who has done alot of Powerpoint presentations though - I would reduce the number of slides depending on the length of the talk.

That's just my experience though, usually a half hour is all an attention span will go for, sometimes even less. I'm enthralled by tomato pics, but it would be good to include a pic of where you grow etc., sometimes putting it all into context helps...

And I find a robust conversation either at the end or questions throughout helps people stay connected to the talk.

[KarenO]

I would love to hear you give this talk. I am sure you will be very well recieved. Anyone who is interested in heirloom tomatoes would love this. After your final tweaking and after you have given your presentation, it would be great if you post this on your FB page. If you were to do that, I'd love to share it with my friends on my Northern gardener FB page if that is ok with you. break a leg. you'll be terrific and they are fortunate to have you speak for the event.
a fan
Karen O

[carolyn137]

Tania, how much time have you been given for your presentation? I ask b'c having done many talks, with slides, it seems to me to be wayyyy too much material to present.

And putting up the links to the various categories is interesting, but how is someone in the audience going to be able to copy them down, or whatever.

If it were me I'd just stick with a link to your home site and an explanation of the short cuts to that link below, and the perhaps a slide showing what one can find in your data base and how to go about it.

And finally, a slide of a single variety page, you can chose one of my varities if you wish, explaining the various tabs at the top of that single page.

And I agree with surf girl that often questions asked from the audience can be thee most valuable for everyone.

I was scheduled for a one hour talk to a Master Gardener class, with slides, and two hours after that I was still answering questions, but then I was asked questions about how to start seeds, what was the real difference between hyrids and Op's, how to process seeds, most common tomato diseases and on and on and on.

Carolyn, who also thinks you can whiz through the slides of the varieties pretty quickly as long as you don't entertain questions about them and where they came from and all that, those slides illustrating nicely the concept of biological diversity. One other thing you might consider doing, if there's time, is to write something to be copied on a single sheet of paper to be handed out that has the link to your site and the various links , ala shortcuts, so those in the audience have something they can take home with them.And you add anything else to those sheets that you think are valuable. Which begs the question of how many do you think have computers or access to one.

[Tania]

Wow, awesome feedback! Thank you folks!

I am given 1.5 hrs for the presentation. Half of the audience may have been already attending my other presentations at the other seedy events, where I talked about growing tomatoes in containers and growing tomatoes from seeds.

I usually tell the folks to go to my website and look for a link to the slides - they will be able to download the slides after the presentation (assuming they have computers).

I was also going to show how a page at TOMATObase looks like, choosing the best looking one - i.e. Aunt Ruby's German Green and show folks how to navigate the website. That alone would take ~5 minutes.

I will be going through the pictures slides very quickly, not talking much about the varieties pictured. These are just to show the different types of tomatoes, as I found that many folks are not exposed to the diversity.

The Q&A session will be at the end, but I do take questions during the presentation, if they are related to the content. At the end they can ask any questions. I am also staying there for another hour after the presentation to answer any other questions, as I found many people prefer to come and talk about something personally.

Karen, I will post the link to the slides on my FS page on Saturday, after the presentation.

[Wi-sunflower]

I just went thru the pdf. Very nice presentation.

I was asked last year to do a presentation to my local Master Gardeners group. A good friend of mine is a member. What I made up, my first ever Power Point presentation, was no where near as nice as what you have there. Mine had a slightly different focus, obviously, since you have TB and your seed bank to talk about. But like you I tried to point out the fact that there are many more good tomatoes than just RED.

I wasn't given an exact time for my talk and I didn't really prepare it as well as I should have. I think they thought I would go 30 - 45 minutes. Since I took questions AS I went thru the slides, it went well over an hour. They more or less finally cut me off but some were asking things afterwards.

When you have good info and are passionate about what you are doing, it isn't hard to go on and on with a presentation.

I know you will do well with you presentation.

Carol

[carolyn137]

Tania, thanks for your answers to my questions and it looks like you will have time to present what you want to as well as answering questions.

So go for it.

Carolyn

[Mlm1]

Beautiful presentation. Wish I could attend.
Marla

[ddsack]

Echoing Marla! Any chance you can get your son or someone to videotape it and post it on Youtube for us to enjoy?

[WVTomatoMan]

Tania,

Very nice presentation. You might want to have printout sheets for just the links to hand out for people who are interested - maybe even pass around the printouts for people to take. Also you could tell from the videos of my talks that the Q&A sessions can take as long as the presentation so be prepared for that. You're speaking on a subject that you're passionate about and that tends to make it easy so I know you'll do great.


Randy

[Tania]

Thank you Carol

I hope by Saturday I will be feeling well to do a great job presenting it.

I made quite a few changes to the slides, as some of them were way too busy (great observation, Doug! ), so I got 16 slides with actual content + a quick tour around TOMATObase website + tomato pictures to show. 3-4 minutes per slide is a good pace for me.

I think this will fit into 60 minutes, leaving plenty of time for Q&A.

I will post the updated slide deck later this week.

[Tania]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Tania, thanks for your answers to my questions and it looks like you will have time to present what you want to as well as answering questions.

So go for it.

Carolyn

Thank you Carolyn

[Tania]

Randy, Dee, Marla, thank you

The slide with the links (the last one) will not be shown. Not enough time, and it does not quite fit into the topic. I have it there in case someone asks about 'the best tomatoes for PNW'. (I always get this question)

I also added a few more pictures to the most 'boring' slides.

I wish my son would attend, but he cannot. Stan will be there to help me, he is not very good with videotaping things, but I suppose we can still try


Here is the updated interim version.