stephbg | SAGE-AU

For posterity's sake I should report that I delivered my tech writer presentation to the System Administrators' Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) WA branch last night. It was a cosy affair of about 20, including 3 or 4 familiar faces from UniSFA/Swancon connections. It's a small town.

It's a constant source of amusement to me when half a dozen senior management and academic types at ACS meetings flutter about trying to get the projector to talk nicely to a laptop. I had thought a sysadmin group would fare rather better, but no, fluttering was to be had. I will say in their defence that the projector was an unfamiliar model, but it boggles me how consistently projector technology fails. Perhaps in the tradition of VCR technology it requires the innocence of a child to operate the damn things.

It went OK. I've been having a rough fibro week so I was a bit short on the sparkly. Some of the cuts to the presentation to re-engineer it for a sysadmin audience were rougher than I would have liked. When addressed to a management audience the presentation had a clear educational purpose and message. This didn't quite translate, but I did find many unexpected parallels between the two professions so there was some sympathy there.

I scored not one but two mugs for my trouble.