Here's the Plan...

1. The first image that I am using is at a rally in which a woman is holding a sign that says, “Ours is a Country of Immigrants”. I want to start with this because my argument basically is that immigration and baseball are perhaps the two most important aspects of US society. The woman holding the sign is Latina, so she either is an immigrant herself or someone in her family history was (like all of us), so I think that it is an effective image.

2. This picture is of people getting off of the ships at Ellis Island in the early 1900s. I want to show how immigration has changed since the early days, and this is the way to do it. Today, people come in illegally or have to go through a visa process, but back then people risked death, disease, and uncertainty just to get a piece of the American Dream. This image shows how this country was essentially built on that dream.

3. This cartoon represents my “and this is what immigration looks like today…” thought to follow the image of Ellis Island. It pokes fun at the difficulties that this legal process gives immigrants, and also shows how it is contradictory to the original American values.

4. This image is very interesting because the white man holding the “stop the invasion” sign is staring back at a group of guys who, once again, are either immigrants or second generation Americans. Not only does this show the awkwardness of the situation, but it reveals that some people are anti-immigration. This sort of segues me into the basis of my argument.

5. I think that this picture of the baseball mitt, glove, and ball on the American flag exemplify America, in a picture. My lead-in to my argument based on the last slide is basically “I wonder what his favorite baseball team is…”, because baseball is America’s pastime. Today, it seems hypocritical to be anti-immigration and pro-baseball—like the two concepts of baseball and immigration are irrevocably intertwined, and every fan of baseball must be lenient towards immigration law. This is sort of personal opinion, but it is my presentation.


6. This picture allows me to get in on the argument. I’m still deciding if it helps my argument in anyway besides being something that I like to look at, but it is a photo of my bedroom wall and my fanatical shrine to the White Sox. I think that it establishes me as a crazy fan that has a [somewhat] knowledgeable opinion on the matter of immigration in baseball, but also baseball’s general importance to people and the country. It also leads me into the next slide by showing what the dream is for wannabe MLB players (maybe not exactly to be on my bedroom wall, but to be a part of the things depicted on said wall…)


7. This photo is of a 16-year-old Dominican prospect named Miguel Angel Sano and his family. He just signed a contract with the Minnesota Twins (poor choice) and received the largest signing bonus for a non-Cuban Latin American Player. However, the importance of this picture is that his family surrounding on him clearly looks at him as their only hope. Sano represents the dream of escaping poverty that I focus on in my paper.

8. This picture was taken at some sort of anti-immigration soiree because the sign says “Save American Jobs Support H-2B”. This introduces the idea of h-2b visas with their quotas that limit immigration, and also the way in which Americans fear for their jobs because of immigration. Minor league players, like Sano will be one day, need these visas in order to play baseball in the US. They are increasingly difficult to get.

9. On the other side of the Dominican players’ struggle is their own government. This picture is of Angel Luis Joseph, a Dominican baseball player whose parents were born in Haiti. He could not get a visa in the US because his own government would not give him his birth certificate in order to apply for one. This is an interesting twist on the immigration argument that most people are unaware of, and it is keeping him from his dream.

10. At the end of the immigration ordeal are players like this man, David Ortiz. He is one of the Dominican “it boys”—having made it to the US to enjoy a successful career. This image serves as “the light at the end of the tunnel” for the other stories that I have brought up. I'll also throw some information in about the p-1 visas that players like him get to use, only once they are called up to the big leagues.

11. This is an image of a newspaper clip that pictures Jackie Robinson shaking hands with his new manager. I feel like you can’t talk about people like David Ortiz without talking about Jackie Robinson. Even though he is not African American, David Ortiz’s skin color have kept him from playing baseball in the Major Leagues if it were not for Jackie Robinson. This slide serves to show where baseball has moved from in the past 60+ years.

12. This photo is a roster photo of the Brooklyn Dodgers after Robinson joined the team. I like it because you can clearly tell what the complexion of baseball was before he came along. If you looked at the Dodgers’ roster today, it would obviously look very different. This lead to many changes in baseball, which I begin to discuss after this slide.

Use more comedy to get attention

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLuDXHH1Mec

This presentation did not seem as formal as the Pecha Kucha you showed us in class on Tuesday. He was more interactive with the audience and made more jokes then the introduction to Pecha Kucha. He took ideas that people already had but tweaked a few things to make them a little better or safer for people to use. For example he had a bench press mixed in with some sort of reclining chair so that if someone had dropped the bar on them selves it would give in instead of crushing your chest. The audience seemed like young adults or ages twenty to forty because of the fitness plans and the audience had to be pretty laid back because of all the jokes he was making. Most of his ideas were real far fetched that he drew on his on.

It seemed like he let his picture dictate how his speech was going or more like he was winging his presentation. He had really good images of his ides he had came up with and a lot of things that made you think that maybe in the near future these ideas he had could really be created. I still don’t know the format of the Pecha Kucha but it did not seem like he was following one. The one you showed in class was a recorded voice timed with pictures that would rotate. This guy did it live and went long with the pictures instead of the example one.

He drew a lot of his own lines in the pictures to show us visually what he was thinking in his head as he came up with the idea. I feel if he would have used still clips or jus one clip the audience would not of got a good idea or really good visual of what he was trying to create. I think if I would have pictures and a chance to visually show you what I was talking about in my RP3 argument it might have been felt more by the audience I was presenting to. I talked about how Cuban defectors were being taken advantage of by the Major leagues and some of the thing they had to do was take a little boat or waft to another country with sharks circling the boat and fifteen foot waves around them.

I had a nice picture of them in the boat but I did not have a chance to show what they were going through. It might have been better for me to use still clips instead of a video so the picture I would show could really sink in to the audience and they one in to what I am saying

Blog post 6 (late)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqZI4h4c3uQThis Pecha Kucha discusses different projects in industrial design. For example: a product that helps feeding your pets snacks while you are out and about, a product that gives feedback on energy usage and how much it is costing the user to use energy. I think it is also made for those who may be interested in industrial design. The video seems to be for an audience that may be funding industrial design projects. I personally don't think many people would support some of the products, the energy out putter is the only one that seems like it could be a necessaty.

I think it makes use of the form because there are different pictures for the designs that he has created and he uses the time to introduce what they are and why they are useful. The creator didn't use any music or sound effects which made it some what boring. And there weren't any transitions between slides, it just jumped from one picture to another. In my opinion I would say this was a very basic pech kucha presentation.

I don't think I would be able to transform my rp3 into the format of a pech kucha because I wouldn't want to feel like I'm leaving some information out. I think I would be able to use the format in another project that didn't have as much information, and one that i need pictures to get my point across.

Giving Pecha Kucha

This Pecha Kucha presentation was given by a woman named Jennifer Bolton, an auctioneer at Allegria Auction at a Pecha Kucha event in Seattle. Her presentation was on "giving", and every presenter had a different topic that they had to make into this form. Since hers was "giving", she told three stories about three different people who gave something to a complete stranger. One man provided someone with a ride to and from a gas station when their car broke down in the middle of no where, one man gave a child a pair of shoes, and one woman worked very hard to return something that did not belong to her. The presenter used these as examples of the positive impact we can have on others by giving. Her audience was obviously those at the event, but on Youtube, the video is tagged as "nonprofit and activism". Her audience is basically anyone who will listen, who she then hopes to inspire to give freely to others.

The form in this presentation is interesting--it seemed a little off with certain slides lasting a little longer than 20 seconds, and the presentation was around 9 minutes instead of 6:40. I don't know if she used more than 20 pictures or just talked about them for more than 20 seconds, but some of them did seem a little long. It did not seem like every single image in her presentation had a purpose that was specifically serving her argument in one way or another. After using some concrete examples and pictures to portray those, she also threw in some random ones of certain "giving" situations in order to continue her previous thoughts for longer than 20 seconds. While this wasn't a horrible thing to do, she could have found some way to get to the point she was trying to make sooner rather than having these "filler" images. There were no sound effects or music to go along with her presentation, and since she wasn't shown on screen, I could not tell if the pauses in her speech were for effect, mistakes, or if she was overcome with emotion. Sometimes, it felt like the latter, which was awkward. If that was not the case, then she just did a poor job transitioning at some points, whereas other transitions were perfect. She also did not mention that she was an auctioneer until 7:44 into the video, which is already over the allotted time, and that was evident. The stories about giving were nice, but the middle really lagged. Because of this, when she actually introduced the reason why she was brought to the event in the first place, it felt rushed and out of place. Her main purpose was to encourage benefit auctions as a means of giving back the way that the other people in her presentation did. That is why the stories were beneficial, but since the broader statements about what giving means seemed unnecessary when they were not directly connected to her purpose as she went along.

For my own presentation, I would hope to use the storytelling technique like she did, either to open the presentation or scattered throughout it. Stories usually grab people more than straight facts. I think that it also helps people to apply ideas to real life situations, so that the topic does not seem distant and incomprehensible. Maybe switching off between different stories and different issues would be helpful and beneficial to the organization of my argument. I’m not sure yet if bending some of the rules would be helpful, but I think that incorporating sound other than my own voice might be good for the presentation. Who wants to hear me talking for that long? Since baseball has such a rich media history, I would like to incorporate some of that into the presentation. That is the reason that people want to come play it so badly—because they can see players on TV, listen on the radios, and read about them in newspapers. I don’t know how I would do this yet, but it will come to me eventually.