Random presenting experience

I thought it was too weird/funny not to post about. I was presenting yesterday on Silverlight to a group of about 100 developers attending under the MSDN umbrella. Unfortunately, I had come down with a pretty dodgy virus which meant I wasn't really on top form. Now, if I had time and there was someone available to deliver my session I would have sensibly backed out and recovered at home but that wasn't to be and I had to push on.

When you present you get a good grasp of the audience by seeing people's faces and their emotion and level of engagement in the content. Now, I was doing this as normal, maybe not 100% but I swear that the bloke of The Apprentice who is Sir Alan's aide (on the left) was in my session watching. Not only that! But a guy I used to go to Queens with was there as well - now that is possible I guess but he lives in Northern Ireland and he would've told me he was coming. Very random and alarming when you are just about getting through the content you had planned!

Kids, the lesson to learn from all this is - *Don't present while ill* :-)

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 17, 2007
  Good personal experience to share! My personal approach - present as long as you can do and leverage current state to carry out the message. People remember unusual things rather dry facts, i bet they have noticed you were ill - that is what will be remembered first, then the content - in case it was good, i am sure it was :) - associated with it. One of our local mentors was giving us some presentation how to wake folks during the presentation - it is comon knowledge that every 8 minutes or so audience lose you unless you do something unusual. From my experience it is true. Next time, something unusual happens to you - you forget your laptop, you come to other town, you prepare wrong presentation - try to leverage it rather pass it to someone else :) again - thanks for sharing alik

• Anonymous
  May 17, 2007
  Considering you were ill it was still a good presentation! Any chance of putting your artistic samples online? Luke

• Anonymous
  May 21, 2007
  The comment has been removed