TU Tuesday Guest Speaker

Poise- The speaker was very comprehensible while speaking, but had a sense of wavering to his tone throughout the talk. He had a very clear set of ideals, but was not particularly adept at dealing with audience members whom held strong and controversial opinions, such as with Andrew Fedorov's argument for the two extremes of twitter and books as opposed to newspapers. The speaker did try to engage the audience, but was somewhat limited to a straightforward set of thoughts such as reading books and being against internet anonymity. He did not bend to incorporate the audience's thoughts into his discussion afterwards, but on the other hand, the audience was not really motivated to push forward a novel idea to examine.

Clarity- As far as clarity was concerned, the speaker did a great job, as he was a journalist. His words were concise, although his tone was unsure, which still got his message across. He acknowledged that journalism wasn't always objective, and thus was very talented at using modifiers to convey a feeling across to reinforce his rhetoric on reading lots of books instead of browsing the web and facebook and twitter.

Volume- His voice was audible, but it was slightly quieter than some speakers. Throughout the whole speaking, however, there was not much inflection, and so it became a narrow discussion. There were some parts where he was telling stories, and perhaps it was because of the task of multitasking between recollection and speaking, but he sometimes became too quiet.

Information- He gave a lot of information, but arguably it was subjective. His speaking was centered around key principles that were information about his views and about facts that supported them, but there came a time when there could have been considerably too much redundant support for the point of reading lots of books and not enough reasons as to an in-depth why.

Organization- For an audience driven speaking, and with a fairly unmotivated audience as well, the organization was very good. His points were conveyed neatly, and had facts surrounding them. It was not creatively organized, but that's hard to do with such an audience. He put his views first and foremost, and gave many supporting reasons and stories capturing his points perfectly, albeit redundantly.

I did not participate as much as I had hoped to, because there was not much that interested me as far as the field of journalism went, and because I am not an active participant in general. Some other classmates were like me as well, and did a very poor job of participating. Some, such as the regular people whom consistently asked questions did keep the discussion going well, and I've observed those people to have been active in the field of literature in general.
For next year, I would recommend someone way more radical, such as the author of a book, or a columnist. Someone working in a field that requires opinions as opposed to facts is much more likely to have a broader range of categories that he/she can and will be willing to debate and discuss in. Also, people whom travel the world have a very large outlook and lots of experience.