For this seminar, the group invited a panel of guest speakers from different fields of the media industry to talk on the competitiveness of Melbourne's media industry and how to be successful. They also shared with us their invaluable experience in their areas of expertise like television, digital media and events. I gave this seminar a Distinction. Below is my justification for the mark that I gave the seminar.
Guest Speakers:
The speakers for this seminar were relevant to the topic of discussion and each managed to give an elaborate account of how they had to work through the good and bad times in the media industry. All the speakers also agreed that nothing short of hard work and perseverance is one of the essential keys to success. The way they went about discussing about the topic was engaging for me as they interacted with each other as well as the audience. It seemed to be a small discussion among the guests as well, and that kept most of the conversation going and through that, they raised many interesting points on their work life.
Facilitation of session:
The host spoke well, but was distracting at times as he moved a lot throughout the discussion and did not engage with the guests or the audience much.
It seemed that Dwayne Thompson, Promotions Coordinator for Future Entertainment, a company that focuses on youths, was the person who engaged with the audience more as compared to the other guest speakers. He was also the one who impressed me the most as he has accomplished many major projects for his age and thus I found him inspiring.
The PowerPoint slides were well done too, with the exception that the colour combination used for the words and the background did not go well and made it hard to read. There was not a lot of refreshments available too, and I thought that there should have been more drinks as they were gone pretty fast. It is always better to have more refreshments than not having enough.
The question and answer session was good too and the guests shared their many views with us that was really relevant to the topic discussed.
Relevance to my areas of interest:
However, one problem that I had was the way that Dwayne handled one of the questions asked by a fellow international student with a Singaporean or Malaysian accent regarding the possibility of international students making it here in Melbourne.
Although it seemed that Sabrina Jansz, a Production Assistant in Sportsbrand, had more experience working with internationals, only Dwayne managed to answer. He stated roughly that in order to succeed, we needed to do a lot of research and networking and share our ideas of how we will go about getting things done. What he shared did not really answer the question on how international students could make it here, he only gave a general formula on how to succeed.
Being an international student myself, I know that international students do not priority when it came to getting jobs here and hence I looked forward to getting a good idea on what should be done. Dwayne's answer was disappointing. He also assumed that the student who asked the question came from India. Although he might look like an Indian, he might not be one and it is always better to check with him instead of assuming as the student might have found it offensive. In Singapore, we have Chinese, Malays, Indians, Europeans, Caucasians and many people whose parents are interracial. Thus, asking where the student was from would have been better.
No comments:
Post a Comment