Hello. My name is Keira Koch and I am a student at Gettysburg College. I have been researching women’s experience at Gettysburg College during the 1950s and learning about digital humanities during the summer as a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow in Musselman Library. Based on what I’ve learned about digital humanities, I have been able to create a website by using the digital tool Scalar, to tell the narrative of women during the 1950s by looking at their academic, social, and personal lives at Gettysburg College. By using digital tools, we can create digital projects that can display research in an interactive way that a paper cannot. Specifically, my project pertained to Gettysburg College women of the 1950s. Now that I’ve done this part, my next step is to expand upon my research by looking at women from other time periods at the college. You have been a supporter of undergraduate research, and I thank you for your continuous support. I would like to show other undergraduate students how to use digital tools for their research. In order to this, I hope you will consider introducing digital humanities to your students. If we are able to move forward, I expect to see an increase in the number of the students who are interested in research and an increase in the number of students who are interested in using digital tools. I know that’s a lot of information. I hope we will be able to meet again soon.
To be completely honest, I had no idea what an elevator speech was until our workshop. Now, since I know what an elevator speech is, I realize how important they are. An elevator speech is an introduction to you and who you are and what you are for, a first impression. I think it is safe to compare an elevator speech to and advertisement or commercial. You say all that you can and need to say about yourself in 30 seconds but it is up to the person or audience that you are speaking to, to decide whether they are interested or not interested. These people who you are talking to can range from being a friend to a very important donor.
Because you may be talking to different types of people, the meaning of your elevator speech might change. If I were talking to a friend, my elevator speech would be much more relaxed and informal. My elevator speech would most likely be trying to convince her/him or apply for the Digital Summer Scholarship Fellowship or to simply tell them what I did this summer. My elevator speech to a very important donor would be very professional and probably encouraging them to continue donating money to digital humanities. My elevator speech to students in a class would be still formal but possibly more personable. The message of my elevator speech would be to introduce them to digital humanities or convince them to use digital tools for their research.
The elevator speech above is aimed at professors. My goal is to tell them about my research and my work with digital tools, as well as convince them to use digital tools in their classrooms and introduce digital humanities to their students. Although this speech was written for a hypothetical situation, there is a strong possibility that I will deliver this speech to professors or people I meet at Bucknell. With some tweaking and drafting, I can say I am ready to deliver my elevator speech.
The great thing about Bucknell, is that most of the people who go there want to hear a lot more than 30 seconds … when you get into a room full of digital humanists, we love to talk and talk and talk about what we are doing.
DH practitioners need to be our own best PR people.