Presentation Question

[ekuadam]

I have a question about a presentation I was thinking of possibly doing. At our lab we have a community outreach team where we go out and explain forensics to a variety of groups, such as adults at the citizens police academy, down to boy scouts and girl scouts earning their investigator badges. The younger students do activities like chromatography, fingerprint development, etc. I am also running an explorer program for local high school kids.

The reason we do programs like this, is as I am sure most of you know, is the lab in Houston has had issues in the past and has lost some respect in the local community. While we aren't the same lab any more we still have to earn the trust and respect back. Also, there are alot of people in our company who enjoy teaching and explaining what they do as most people only think of forensics as what they see on NCIS, CSI, etc...

My question is, would does anyone think there would be interest in hearing about our labs past and how we formed our Community Outreach team, the activities we do, how it has helped, etc. I feel there may be labs out there that may be interested in developing their own team and would want to hear the challenges we have faced and the successes we have had. I figure it would be about a 30 minute presentation at next years IAI (if it is accepted). Please let me know if you think there would be any interest in it.

[NRivera]

I think that would be an excellent presentation idea. Just don't let your boss on the stage... and you can tell him I said that.

[ekuadam]

He wouldn't be involved. Haha. You think I am going to get him to come out on a weekend to show some kids how to powder and take record prints? Or get yelled at by adults when we show them how forensics portrayed on television is wrong and we really do, that we have ruined television for them??

[Steve Everist]

My question is, would does anyone think there would be interest in hearing about our labs past and how we formed our Community Outreach team, the activities we do, how it has helped, etc. I feel there may be labs out there that may be interested in developing their own team and would want to hear the challenges we have faced and the successes we have had. I figure it would be about a 30 minute presentation at next years IAI (if it is accepted). Please let me know if you think there would be any interest in it.

I think it would be a good presentation. It's not something you hear about often, but I bet there are a lot of agencies out there doing some version of this. Ours does, but we're also levy funded and this sort of community engagement is vital for the people we serve.

Identification News for Oct/Nov/Dec has the minutes from the BoD meeting. Item #20 is Lesley Hammer's Educational Planner Report. In this report, it is mentioned that "She also briefed the board on the creation of potential "Ted Talks"..." This may be something to look out for. The time range may be closer to 15 minutes, but it may be a good forum for presenting this information. But if you 've got a 30 minutes worth of material, then it would be worthwhile. Also remember that you may want only 20 minutes of material for a 30-minute slot, so you'll have time for questions, walk-ups, and getting cleared out for the next speaker so that you don't run into their time (and hope the previous speaker didn't do that to you).