5:3
My talk at the University of Rhode Island went very well. For each talk, I forget to do something. For the first MAHSLIN talk, I forgot to show my props. For the second, I didn’t tell the joke. In Wisconsin, I forgot to tell the jokes. For URI, I forgot to show my props.
It was difficult following someone as funny as Tony Stankus, the event organizer and person who introduced me, but people liked my opening comment about taking the audience "by storm." We’d been watching the effects of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Wilma all day. Some people didn’t come to the event because the rain and wind were so bad.
I also got in a contradance joke, since I was hoping to hear some friends play at a contradance tonight instead of having a speaking engagement. “If we leave before the speaker starts,” I said while setting up, “we can make it to the contradance before it ends. Oh, wait. I /am/ the speaker.”
We spent too much time joking around and not enough time on the presentation, but people seemed to have a good time. A few people learned something.
Some stats: Perhaps there were 40-something in the audience. Most people knew what blogs were. A little bit fewer knew about feeds. 4-6 people blog. Most of them blog anonymously. Most people were there for personal growth as opposed to attending because an employer is getting into the technology. No one hand-coded their own XML feeds.
I’ll try to get at least the outline of my talk online soon.
So, five presentations down now. Three more to go. (So far.)
And, yes, some of the talk will be on an exam.
Oh, yeah. Elsevier, the sponsor, gave me a nifty silver stapler and a bookstore gift card. The box of staples has an orange rectangle with the word MAX in it in white letters. When I first glanced at it, I thought “Why does a stapler box have an XML feed?”
Tony gave me a mum plant that color coordinates with my presentation’s slides. How he knew what colors they were going to be, I don’t know. I appreciate them!
