I write of happy things
Aug. 31st, 2007 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgBack to the office today for the second day in a row. Yay! Spent much of the morning polishing the final version of my presentation which is suddenly almost upon us. This has been in the wind since November 06, so it's a relief to have it almost over.
I've written plenty of training materials and marketing presentations for other people, but I lack recent experience in presenting them myself. To give myself a crutch I've scripted most of it fairly tightly, and have practised quite a bit. Fortunately I understand the difference between writing for readers and writing for speech, so it flows quite easily. I couldn't do it without my notes, but by no means do I need to stare fixedly at the page.
I've been quite restrained on the humour side. The picture of Buffy on one of the "project stakeholders" slides stayed in, but I've kept it otherwise neutral. Ish. Insofar as I was able. No inappropriate sheep jokes that are otherwise suitable for a mining-only audience. I do have a disclaimer slide and I ask people to not look through my resume to try to identify the difficult people and organisations I'm talking about. Mild stuff.
It's pretty much a win-win situation really, even if I choke. At worst:
* I stare fixedly at my notes and read through it, with occasional requests from the audience to slow down or speak up.
* An audience member asks long involved rambling questions and I forget the first half of the question by the time they get to the end. I've seen this happen to other presenters, so I can see it happening to me. At this point I will draw on a fond memory of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
emma_in_oz saying "And your point is?" If I'm feeling particularly evil I could respond with the pointed stare, pointed tone and pointed phrase that poor Husband cops when he's very tired and can only gabble: "I'm sorry. Was there a question in there?"
Other possibly more polite alternatives include "Perhaps we can come back to that later?" or "I'm sorry, could you rephrase that?". I also take confidence in the memory of the restless shifting of the audience when this happened to someone else. If I fall at this particular hurdle it won't be entirely my fault.
I refuse to anticipate fear of looking stupid.
* An audience member asks a perfectly reasonable question to which I would normally expect to know the answer, but I go blank. Also quite likely. I'm not a lightning-fast instant on-my-feet thinker, but rather a give-me-a-problem-then-step-away-and-I'll-find-angles-you-never-imagined thinker. I can keep up my end in an interactive discussion, but I'm not at my best under pressure to produce instant sexy sound bites. Sometimes I get it right and then I get all puffy and proud like a pigeon who's just won Best In Show.
I do have the time-buying option "I'm sorry my hearing isn't the best" (which is perfectly true and a direct contributor to the way I work). "Perhaps we could come back to that later" could also work. In normal-sit-around-a-table-at-work sessions (and to a lesser extent job interviews) I'm happy to pause and show my thinking face (tilt head back, look up, eyes unfocused, nearly shut, frowning slightly, lips pursed and saying "hmmmmmmm" for a few seconds, possibly accompanied by vague hand waving as I draw 3D diagrams in thin air). At least I think I am happy to do that. I've never thought about my thinking face quite so much before so perhaps I should get a photo to see how silly it looks.
Silly or not, I must remember that time travels differently under the lights and I will take as many brain cycles as I need to produce an adequate response of some sort. I am a generalist and it is perfectly reasonable to claim ignorance of the technical details.
* Afterward during the free-beer-and-networking bit I over-relax and gabble nonsense at high speed, tinged by hysterical laughter. Oh_o. That *is* likely to happen. Must remember - it ain't over until they pour me into a taxi at the end of the night.
Remember: NO CAFFEINE!
* OK, I could actually pass out/levitate/vomit/combust in front of the room but what can you do about that? Apart from call Jerry Springer?
At best:
* I will be exposed (in a good clean way) to some of the most well-connected senior IT people in the state. They'll be wildly impressed with the depth and breadth of my knowledge, and even if my performance tanks on the night they'll have references to my three best white papers to read later. Employment offers will flood in (not that I actually need them right now but I love it when it happens).
* I get to hector people about some of my favourite hobby horses ("business solutions are *deployed* not installed!" and "don't confuse data management with business logic" and "soft skills are not easy!" and "spreadsheets are evil because..." and "let specialists concentrate on what makes them special" etc etc).
* I will have fun throughout because I really believe in the messages (see hobby horses, above) and the product.
All this navel-gazing may seem over the top to people who give lectures all the time, but I've found it a useful exercise to identify exactly what it is I might fear. Right now I have no fear :-)
And now for the weather
Walking to the train station this afternoon I passed some kind of mutant in King Street. Model for fashion week I thought, but god her legs were unnaturally long and thin and totally out of proportion to the rest of her. Looked like she was a spider who used to work in a scissors factory and one day fell asleep near the slice-o-chop machine. As she passed me in the street I heard her say on her phone "But I eat five meals a day!" Sure. Define "meal", princess.
I've written plenty of training materials and marketing presentations for other people, but I lack recent experience in presenting them myself. To give myself a crutch I've scripted most of it fairly tightly, and have practised quite a bit. Fortunately I understand the difference between writing for readers and writing for speech, so it flows quite easily. I couldn't do it without my notes, but by no means do I need to stare fixedly at the page.
I've been quite restrained on the humour side. The picture of Buffy on one of the "project stakeholders" slides stayed in, but I've kept it otherwise neutral. Ish. Insofar as I was able. No inappropriate sheep jokes that are otherwise suitable for a mining-only audience. I do have a disclaimer slide and I ask people to not look through my resume to try to identify the difficult people and organisations I'm talking about. Mild stuff.
It's pretty much a win-win situation really, even if I choke. At worst:
* I stare fixedly at my notes and read through it, with occasional requests from the audience to slow down or speak up.
* An audience member asks long involved rambling questions and I forget the first half of the question by the time they get to the end. I've seen this happen to other presenters, so I can see it happening to me. At this point I will draw on a fond memory of
emma_in_oz saying "And your point is?" If I'm feeling particularly evil I could respond with the pointed stare, pointed tone and pointed phrase that poor Husband cops when he's very tired and can only gabble: "I'm sorry. Was there a question in there?"Other possibly more polite alternatives include "Perhaps we can come back to that later?" or "I'm sorry, could you rephrase that?". I also take confidence in the memory of the restless shifting of the audience when this happened to someone else. If I fall at this particular hurdle it won't be entirely my fault.
I refuse to anticipate fear of looking stupid.
* An audience member asks a perfectly reasonable question to which I would normally expect to know the answer, but I go blank. Also quite likely. I'm not a lightning-fast instant on-my-feet thinker, but rather a give-me-a-problem-then-step-away-and-I'll-find-angles-you-never-imagined thinker. I can keep up my end in an interactive discussion, but I'm not at my best under pressure to produce instant sexy sound bites. Sometimes I get it right and then I get all puffy and proud like a pigeon who's just won Best In Show.
I do have the time-buying option "I'm sorry my hearing isn't the best" (which is perfectly true and a direct contributor to the way I work). "Perhaps we could come back to that later" could also work. In normal-sit-around-a-table-at-work sessions (and to a lesser extent job interviews) I'm happy to pause and show my thinking face (tilt head back, look up, eyes unfocused, nearly shut, frowning slightly, lips pursed and saying "hmmmmmmm" for a few seconds, possibly accompanied by vague hand waving as I draw 3D diagrams in thin air). At least I think I am happy to do that. I've never thought about my thinking face quite so much before so perhaps I should get a photo to see how silly it looks.
Silly or not, I must remember that time travels differently under the lights and I will take as many brain cycles as I need to produce an adequate response of some sort. I am a generalist and it is perfectly reasonable to claim ignorance of the technical details.
* Afterward during the free-beer-and-networking bit I over-relax and gabble nonsense at high speed, tinged by hysterical laughter. Oh_o. That *is* likely to happen. Must remember - it ain't over until they pour me into a taxi at the end of the night.
Remember: NO CAFFEINE!
* OK, I could actually pass out/levitate/vomit/combust in front of the room but what can you do about that? Apart from call Jerry Springer?
At best:
* I will be exposed (in a good clean way) to some of the most well-connected senior IT people in the state. They'll be wildly impressed with the depth and breadth of my knowledge, and even if my performance tanks on the night they'll have references to my three best white papers to read later. Employment offers will flood in (not that I actually need them right now but I love it when it happens).
* I get to hector people about some of my favourite hobby horses ("business solutions are *deployed* not installed!" and "don't confuse data management with business logic" and "soft skills are not easy!" and "spreadsheets are evil because..." and "let specialists concentrate on what makes them special" etc etc).
* I will have fun throughout because I really believe in the messages (see hobby horses, above) and the product.
All this navel-gazing may seem over the top to people who give lectures all the time, but I've found it a useful exercise to identify exactly what it is I might fear. Right now I have no fear :-)
And now for the weather
Walking to the train station this afternoon I passed some kind of mutant in King Street. Model for fashion week I thought, but god her legs were unnaturally long and thin and totally out of proportion to the rest of her. Looked like she was a spider who used to work in a scissors factory and one day fell asleep near the slice-o-chop machine. As she passed me in the street I heard her say on her phone "But I eat five meals a day!" Sure. Define "meal", princess.
