stephbg | Success

If I can get through a public appearance and the worst thing I say is "Insert joke about coddling moth here," I think I'm making progress.

Not bad considering I had to follow Grant Stone, who is rather more practiced an entertainer and public speaker than I. And before that, the keynote address was by Professor David Lindsay, with whom I may be in love. What's not to love about a communication expert who says all the right things about audience engagement and clear writing, and who successfully makes jokes about sheep? He's A Dude.

Perhaps the only hiccough was that I was introduced rather disturbingly as "cutting edge" but most of my time was spent telling people to avoid technological bells and whistles and to make sure that their web pages printed nicely. I'm such a luddite.

Afterwards a few people did say to me "you shouldn't have said you were nervous" which is interesting, for I don't recall saying that I was nervous apart from the usual disclaimers one makes when following several hard acts in a row. Lucky for me the thing was filmed and I was properly mic'd up, so I'll get to obsessively review every little word and gesture. Over and over. And over.

I was also pleased that I managed to adapt my words to previous comments; somewhat necessary since a fortunately-small number of my prepared words seemd to be in direct contradiction to the statements of others. When hobby horses collide...

I'd like to throw in a tiny WTF? vote for the numbering system on Great Eastern Highway in the Belmont area. I foolishly assumed that the street numbers on the north and south sides of the road would bear some kind of relationship to each other. I also foolishly assumed that the street numbers were a matter of public record, not some secret critical to national security. Fortunately I survived both the navigation and parking-in-a-poky-labyrinth-of-rainbow-coloured-concrete-pillars tasks.