Spring was a busy season for guest lectures! I gave five talks in four different venues.
In April, Missouri State University’s Technical and Professional Writing program invited me to give a faculty workshop as part of MSU’s English Week Conference. I was honored to lead keynote workshop and give a talk to students.
My keynote workshop was called “Digital Ethics: What Is and Can Be.” Its abstract looks like this:
This faculty workshop will introduce several ways to engage students with digital ethics related to professional work. Following a brief explanation of digital ethics, activities will include identification and evaluation of ethics in a crisis situation, and imaginative application of ethics to unresolved issues in professional digital activity. Faculty will work in small groups as a demonstration of what one might ask students to do in a classroom.
Missouri State Department of English
I also gave a talk to students entitled “Social Media and Podcasting for Technical Communicators: Concepts and Practicalities.” The abstract:
The emergence of podcasting and social media in professional spaces has given technical communicators new avenues. What are those avenues, and why should they matter to technical communicators and their organizations? After a look at the landscape of new media in technical communication, attendees will hear practical ways to get started in these arenas.
Missouri State Department of English
In February, I gave a talk called “Using Social Media to Expand Audiences for Entrepreneurs and Organizations: Concepts and Practicalities” in the Let’s Talk About series from Universidad del Norte’s Instituto del Idiomas (Baranquilla, Colombia). I Zoomed in to give a talk on this abstract:
Social media is a tool that can reach across many types of borders for professionals. This talk will situate the role of professional social media for established and emerging organizations, because small businesses can scale up to become large businesses with logistical needs. After explaining how social media can be productive for business, the talk will focus on how to find new audiences for businesses and how to write content for those audiences on specific platforms.
They also made some awesome posters:
Finally, I gave two ASU-based talks. The first was a February professionalization talk to Computer Science and Computer Science Engineering students called “Resumes: How to stand out without striking out.” The second was a short Q&A in April with Student Editor-in-Chief Khanh Nguyen and Founding Editor Dr. Patricia Murphy of Superstition Review, about how to be a social media manager for an arts organization. That one was recorded, and can be watched below! You can also find a pocket history of my music blog Independent Clauses from 18:16 to 23:57; thank you to Khanh for asking a question that let me “make it about me” for a minute, talking about the life and history of my project.
I love giving talks like these, so this was an exciting part of the semester for me. Thanks again to Missouri State Technical and Professional Writing, Universidad Del Norte’s Instituto de Idiomas, Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, and Superstition Review for inviting me to talk!