“Will you be livestreaming this?”
It was not an inquiry I had anticipated. I had posted on my group’s social media page that I was getting ready to resume public speaking engagements, and another volunteer had asked about this. I replied I would look into doing so.
I did look into it the day before I was due to speak. While it seemed fairly easy, I’ve worked with enough software to know nothing is as simple as it’s made to appear. I set things up according to the YouTube video instructions and posted on my account that I would, hopefully, be livestreaming the event.
The good news was that almost everything about my presentation went well. The bad news was that the livestream, to the best of my knowledge, was seen by exactly no one. Next time I will recruit a twelve-year-old to help with this, but I was pleased this was the only whoopsie that occurred. It was the first time in years that I had done a public presentation.
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My speaking engagements are for the purpose of raising public awareness about wildlife conservation, particularly elephants. I’m a long-time volunteer for The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, which sponsors a volunteer program for people interested in elephant welfare. These “EleAmbassadors” are trained and tasked to go out into their local communities to help raise awareness about the problems faced by captive populations, as well as their wild counterparts. One doesn’t have to live in Tennessee to help with this worthy cause.
I’ve also volunteered for Wildlife ACT, a conservation group in South Africa, which reviews and accepts volunteers willing to perform endangered species monitoring work. In three trips to different national parks I’ve done everything from tracking elephants to capturing wild dogs. I’ve incorporated this work into my presentations as well.
Before the pandemic I did events regularly, sometimes staffing a display table and other times speaking about my volunteer work. I’ve accumulated quite a library of visual media from my endeavors and I find my audiences are usually captivated by pictures and video of elephants and other African wildlife.
I had never been a public speaker, but I put a program together and ventured out to libraries, senior citizen centers, and schools. After the first few gigs my nervousness subsided and I even learned to speak extemporaneously when the audiovisual equipment failed at a couple engagements. I came to enjoy this tremendously important work. I had a full-time job but managed to hold an event at least once monthly, until the pandemic happened.
I went without public speaking for three years. I did some outdoor tabling events but that was all that was possible, and over time I lost motivation for the work entailed with presentations. Once public life resumed I was hesitant to schedule a talk, but finally set up a date with the Audubon Library to speak at its newly expanded facility.
It was then that I hit the panic button — my former presentation was no longer current, as several changes had taken place at the sanctuary, and my video materials were scattered over three computers, my phone, and several flash drives. Fortunately, I had retired from full-time work, and spent several days putting together a new presentation.
Friends, family and strangers attended the presentation. The AV worked, my talk went over very well, and once again I garnered attention for my beloved elephants. I even was approached about speaking to a couple other groups, so I’m happy to say I’m back in the game.
Maybe next time I’ll even figure out how to livestream things.
