Making Speeches for the Harry Potter Festival - Part 6 of 6
The Harry Potter festival went great.
It's amazing that so many volunteers were able to come together to make such a great event happen. A bunch of my family and friends showed up, and that was awesome. It was a hot day, and long; my first presentation was at 12:15 and my last one was at 6:30.
There are a bunch of interesting stories that I could tell, like meeting an almost real Umbridge from Toronto, or the long conversation I had with police officer Kayla. But, instead, I'm just going to show you the videos of the presentations.
Here's "The Great Gnome Conspiracy of the 18th and 19th Centuries". I wanted to make sure I didn't go over time and throw everyone off, so I ended up being a little short on this one.
It's amazing that so many volunteers were able to come together to make such a great event happen. A bunch of my family and friends showed up, and that was awesome. It was a hot day, and long; my first presentation was at 12:15 and my last one was at 6:30.
There are a bunch of interesting stories that I could tell, like meeting an almost real Umbridge from Toronto, or the long conversation I had with police officer Kayla. But, instead, I'm just going to show you the videos of the presentations.
Here's "The Great Gnome Conspiracy of the 18th and 19th Centuries". I wanted to make sure I didn't go over time and throw everyone off, so I ended up being a little short on this one.
David was a great emcee. The kids really liked it when he did trivia. At one point there were some difficult questions near the end of the festival, when the hardcore fans were left. No one knew the answers and David had to tell them to use their phones, which is funny because it seems like kids would be used to looking up everything on their phones, and he mentioned that the Slytherins should have been doing that the whole time.
Laura was a great help in the dueling demonstration. Here's "A Short History of Muggle Dueling".
Kids love dragons, everyone loves dragons. I had to keep trying to end on this one, but everyone had so many questions, I went a couple minutes over. Once the kids realized that I really would answer any question they had they earnestly engaged. Here's "Muggle Encounters with Dragons Through the Ages".
People were looking forward to the presentation about rubber ducks. I'm glad I brought the props, and I'm glad that they were different sizes, and I'm glad that I didn't buy the bag of 20. We did almost have a fight over the big duck, you'll see that in the video. A lot of people had left by that point in the day, it was hot. The cement pad in front of the stage only had a few kids until I said I was going to throw out some ducks, then kids came running from every direction, where they had been hiding in the shade. Here's "Further Research on the Many Uses of the Rubber Duck".
I only had a few people at the first presentation about gnomes, it was right after the early entry doors had opened. But, a mother and son caught up with me later at the event. They were from Detroit and had especially enjoyed the gnome speech. Basically a one-hundred percent success rate.
I had a couple of guys come up to me at the end of the festival while I was watching the acrobats tear down their equipment. One guy shook my hand and said he really liked my speeches. Another guy shook my hand and said he was "impressed that I could talk about rubber ducks for a half hour." I didn't tell him that it was only 12 minutes. It must have seemed like I included a lot of research in that speech.
It amazes me that the Harry Potter community is still growing. A couple of days ago I did a Harry Potter escape room at Hackley Library with my mother and my friend Jelitza. Potter events like that always sell out, just like Potter in the Park did.
The wand that I hand carved did take some damage. I put florets on it. You can't get a wand like that anywhere because they will obviously break at some point, but mine had that for a little while, and it was awesome. My Dark Mark and Deathly Hallows tattoos are almost completely faded, and thus ends the Potter in the Park adventure.
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You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com
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