Brown Bag

 I gave my first Brown Bag yesterday since starting with Trinity eight months ago.  You're wondering what the heck is a Brown Bag?  It's an informal presentation given during lunchtime and participants are encouraged to bring their lunch, which explains how the practice got its name.

 Each Trinity employee is expected to give 1-2 Brown Bags per year, but since starting in February, I haven't seen any given in my office, which made me a little nervous without an example to follow.  One of the goals my supervisor set for me in my performance review was to give a Brown Bag before the year was up, so I decided to get this goal checked off.

My topic was Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS).  I attended a training back in May on this and its an area where Trinity is hopeful we can generate some business since a lot of our clients are in the petroleum and chemical business and have to comply with this new federal standard.

As usual, other work kept me occupied and I was scrambling at the end to finish my Powerpoint slides.  It took a while, since I had to create each slide from scratch from the training materials I brought back.  There is a ton of information on this topic, so it was hard deciding what to include and what to toss.  In the end I thought I had a good presentation to inform those in my office who knew nothing about CFATS.  I understand these Brown Bags can be anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour.  With the questions and discussion this one was about 1:15 in length.

I don't mind public speaking, but I'm glad I'm done with this goal.  There's more work to do though.  My supervisor has indicated he'd like me to develop a 1-hour class on this that we can advertise and present to our clients.