Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Presenting ...

This morning I got to sleep in a little. But ... that's only because I so graciously agreed to present an overview of my department at our northern campus. Which is nice, because it's less than a 15 minute drive from my house. Now, it's kind of funny that I was presenting to a department meeting of 100+ people. I remember when I first started out, and we'd attend department meetings and have guest speakers. Now, I've become one of those guest speakers. It was a little surreal. Of course, I don't think I knocked anyone's socks off with my 20 minute spiel, but it was good to wipe of my old dusty presenting cobwebs and have to speak on my feet for a bit.

Of course, I wasn't prepared for the whole ordeal from a technical standpoint. Due to the departments having team members in our Bangalore office, I had to put on a special microphone, and make sure I stayed standing on an X the whole time so that I was always in the camera. They handed me a mic initially for the rest of the room, but there was no way I could use a mic and a clicker to advance my slides ... I like to gesture way too much! So I had to talk slightly louder than normal, but it was okay. Because through it all, I just remembered what one of my good friends told me:

"No one's really listening to you anyway!"

It's so true, so you have to know how to interject and throw in a few laughs, but then stay serious, too. Alas, it's over, and I'm sure I will get called up to do another one sometime in the near future now that I agreed to do this one. Who knows, maybe I should charge a speaker fee?

1 comment:

Becky said...

your speaking 'gig' made me think of speech competitions and being told that I had 'potential!"