Technical presentation on Cybersecurity

I chose this presentation for my blog because I think it does an excellent job of highlighting my sociotechnical skills. This presentation was my 5th assignment in ENG 2003 this semester and the goal was for me to find a group, select a Grand Engineering Challenge, and work together to create a presentation explaining why it is a challenge and providing a solution. The presentation put me in a position where I had to work with different people who had worked different reports to agree on a topic and do research. The easiest part was definitely picking the topic we wanted to do because 75% of the group already had a lot of research for that part. Preparing for the presentation taught me how coordination and communication is really the deciding factor in how group projects turn out. We had to organize, pick time slots that worked for all of us, and divide the work load equally so no one was overwhelmed. This aspect of the group work taught me how to compromise and find middle ground when working with a number of people. I have to emphasize though, that if I my group members were not as easy to communicate with this presentation would not have been as easy to make, the onus of communication always falls on both parties.

The most challenging aspect of this project was recording the video for the presentation because I had to make sure I applied the communication skills I learned in the course, i.e., the 7 C's of communication, the rhetorical triangle, the axioms of communication, etc.

Working on this piece not only taught me how to make presentations to communicate complex topics and ideas orally and visually, but also how to communicate and cooperate with colleagues. The number of different perspectives and ideas we all presented increased the quality of the presentation drastically. It was like we had our own little community where we bounced ideas off each other and agreed on the best one.

I think this piece is my best work because it gave me the opportunity to incorporate everything I learned from the course and it put me in the field to experience the sociotechnical aspect of engineering communication.