Book Series Presentation

I'm too early to make a TILT entry, but I wanted to blog about what I did today. Well, one specific event I did.

I'm on the leadership board of the Organizational Leadership Club, as the VP of Internal Development. The events that I'm in charge of holding are the OLC Book Series. I hosted one such event tonight to (what I think was) great success.

The OLC Book Series, for background, is typically held once a semester and is about a particular book. The club purchases the book, gives them out to members and charges non-members a price for the book. The people who are interested are asked to read the book, and then we hold a discussion/presentation on the contents of the book some three, four weeks after we give out the book.

So the book I used today is called "Power: Why Some People Have It And Others Don't" by Jeffrey Pfeffer. I read it some time ago and found it incredibly fascinating - and disturbing. It certainly challenges one's perceptions on the world. When it came time to discuss events to hold for the semester, I championed using this book.

The books were issued just after Spring Break. Between then and now, I spent a fair amount of time re-reading it, making note of certain situations and things that would be fun to bring up in a discussion environment, and built a 45-minute presentation.

I had sent out an RSVP right when I was ready to issue the books. We had a limited number of books so I said First Come First Served. A few people who RSVP'd didn't end up picking up the books; conversely, a few people turned up just for the discussion (or the free food, but I don't blame them for that since I do the same thing). I must've done something good because at the end of the presentation, a number of people came up to me and asked if there were any copies left to purchase - and there were.

By that, and the fact that only one person spent the time looking at their computer, tells me it was successful (good manners has flown out the window and now people choose to spend their time on the computer instead of paying attention). It makes me look forward to the next one, which I will host in Mini 1 and should be relevant to both classes.