fix

Advise

Some words of advice as you revise the final draft of your TED Talk: Definitely apply all the tips I sent to the class on Wednesday. Also, expand the third part of the talk, so that you actually SHOW us what you saw, read, and heard via your autoethnography, cyberethnography, and interview. Right now, this section feels like a very brief overview. If you flesh it out with quotations and detailed descriptions, your audience will better understand the evidence on which your argument is based. Finally, be sure to connect the recommendations you make in the last section of the talk to the evidence you provided in the third part. Right now, it’s not clear what data your big idea is based upon. As it stands, I’d give the script a grade somewhere in the low B range right now. But, as I say, there’s definitely room to realize your talk’s potential, and the final draft’s not due till Monday.

Tips on Wednesday

Thanks to those who submitted a draft of their complete TED Talk. A few words of advice as you revise:

Your talk should be coherent: a full expression of the single big idea you articulate most directly in part 4. It should not feel like four separate pieces of writing more or less on the same topic that you copy/pasted into a single document. If it does, your audience will be confused and/or bored and/or ready to throw tomatoes! So revise all the parts with part 4 in mind:

· Is the question as you stated it in part 1 really the question that you answer in part 4? If not, revise the question to bring it into alignment with your answer.

· Does the research you summarize in part 2 really bear upon your (revised) question in part 1 and on the idea you express in part 4? If not, cut what's irrelevant and revise what remains so that part 2 is clearly relevant to your talk.

· Is the argument you make in part 4 based explicitly on your analysis of the ethnographic and interview data that you summarize in part 3? If not, either incorporate an analysis of that data into part 4 or cut the superfluous (i.e., unanalyzed data) from part 3. 

· Does part 4 explicitly "call back" to all of what you said in parts 1, 2, and 3? If not, then you're not making all the connections you need to make for the talk to cohere. So either make those callbacks, or cut the loose, unconnected threads from 1, 2, and 3.

Also, don't just plop down earlier assignments into this script. Revise everything so that it flows as a single presentation. I'm seeing too many sentences like, "Today I observed people talking on a reddit thread, and tomorrow I'm gonna check out the Facebook group," I.e., sentences that come straight out of the notes you submitted without being revised for the presentation. Again, revise for a presentation in front of an audience of a thousand+ people who paid to hear you talk. 

Finally, the prompt tells you roughly how many words each section should be. This is deliberate: I designed the structure to insure that you apportion your talk effectively. So make sure that you use those guidelines.