Program Review - Writing for Effectiveness

The Chester County Library hosted Writing for Effectiveness: Finding & Unbridling The Passion on March 3, 2010. Salvatore Grasso, a self published local author was our host for the evening.

The program had 20 enthusiastic participants from a wide range of backgrounds and age ranges.
Discussion topics included How to create character scenes, building effective factual presentations, and how to better open stories and presentations for effectiveness.

Sal did a wonderful job of engaging everyone in the room, and covering a variety of ideas to ensure each attendee could take something away from the evening.

He presented using notes, which he sometimes relied a bit too much on, but as soon as he looked up and starting engaging the group in a conversation on writing, the dynamic of the presentation changed and everyone participated.

I believe this was one of Sal's first presentations, so I anticipate his next presentations will be better and better as he gets more practice.
This was a great general overview presentation for anyone interested in writing a book, or writing more effective letters and correspondence.

The only room requirement would be tables, since there were writing excercises during the presentation.

Sal presented his program for free, and conducted himself in a professional and engaging manner. I would recommend this program for any library in the system. It would be a great unique addition to your program lineup.

I look forward to working with Sal in the future and creating some programs on more specific writing techniques as sort of a "part 2" to this initial presentation.

Program Review - Solar Made Simple

The Chester County Library in Exton hosted Solar Made Simple on September 22, 2009.
The program was presented by Michael Chambers from Chesapeake Solar, a GroSolar Company.

The 56 participants came prepared with notebooks and questions galore. The presentation had the potential to take a sales-pitch turn, but Mike was really understanding that this was a library and removed anything resembling selling in his PowerPoint before the event.

There was some reference to "I can't talke about that" throughout the presentation. But for the most part, he did stick to information that could be used by all.

Mike even learned some new things from participants. Did you know that a Solar Panel is sized using a Golden Ratio? Or that Germany is trying to develop a way for Solar Panels to collect energy even when it's cloudy?

Our participants really did their research!

For the amount of effort needed by the library (none) this was an extremely successful and stress free event. Mike came prepared with his presentation, a table of information, and a sign that displayed the way solar power works, which we posted outside of the room as a welcome.

The Green Valleys Association came with some flyers for their upcoming Chester County Solar Tour, and gave a little blurb at the end of the program to let participants know they could come.

All in all, the event went great. The people gained tons of new knowledge and information, and the library had people scurrying around, post program, using computers, and looking for books that further would help them with solar knowledge.