starhead @ blog again

the presentation took quite a long time to prepare.
i was not astonished about that, because i already knew, that preparations on a particular topic
can consume a lot of time.

Our topic was the "new web", the so called "web 2.0" .
although i knew a little about that topic, it was much to do, to learn, to read and to prepare.

when we were working out the topic, it came to my mind, that it is an important thing to know
more and really much more about the theme and subject than the audience does.
not just to be able to answer questions properly.
i recognized, that it is not possible to handle a theme
and talk about a topic in a fluent and (more or less) understandable way when the speaker is not proficient.
most people of the audience knew not much about the theme. so an additional point was to get an overview and to reduce the contents to their essence and main-points and serve this in little and digestable peaces to the listeners.
and this is just possible, when the speaker knows, what he has to speak about and knows the wider area of his subject.
it´s like looking on something from a farer point.

anyway, so we had to read and inform us very well and could enjoy to explore a new topic more deeply and learn new things. all in all we worked on that theme for about two weeks more or less periodically and so we were not in a hurry or stressed with the preparation.

in the meetings with my presentation-partner Marina we discussed the contents always for new, stroke out some of them and added some new points we wanted to explain.
it seemed, as more as we knew about the web 2.0 as more the contents changed and the process to balance and choose, add or let fall different points of the theme was interesting to watch. at the end, we knew much about the topic, but we were aware, that we cannot deliver all that we know now within 30 to 40 minutes.
so, the process of reduction and condensing started in the last days again.

anyway, we felt good and safe to present the theme web 2.0 and while sitting together and working on the topic surprisingly we were looking forward and joking sometimes what
all could happen to us, what mistakes we could do and we had fun, joy and laughter on preparing the topic.
we were in a surprisingly good mood.

but,
but, but, ...
when the day comes and
the line falls down, the beamers strike, the computers run with bugs, the flipchart burns down, the files don´t open, the network does not work, ...
what is to be done then?

well, so it happened.
two hours before we did a last check in a room in the library and figured out, that we cannot open anymore the powerpoint-file correctly.
the powerpoint was written on microsoft, then worked out on a mac with open-office and saved again. the file didn´t really like that procedure. the formatting was gone. *ups!*. 
quick and hurry, working again, and also preparing a pdf, for the worst case, stored on the hard-disk, on an external hard-disk-drive and on an usb-memory-stick for the very worst cases! ... pdf would work also to present a theme, so we decided.
"mhhh", i thought, always that struggling with technique!
but finally we solved it, even in last minute.

so we were in good mood and looking forward again
and we were sure to do a good, interesting and fluent presentation.

but,
but, but, ....
the story went on , ...
the flipchart wasn´t burned down, when we entered the classroom, ..
that gave us a positive attitude.
the next thing was, there was no adapter for the mac-book to the beamer.
okay, we have the files on a stick, on a hard-disk and we could eventually use another computer,
but in that case we would have to cancel some prepared stuff which i wrote in html on my hard-disk and to perform some explanations and application in a pure old-school-telnet-shell on a unix-server could be a problem.
so we went out to search for an adapter. meanwhile we discussed the point that we have to reorganize our contents and that i have to do parts of topics i want to talk about more or less free, in the case we cannot solve the technical problem with the beamer. Marina was a bit worried about that because she was involved in my parts.
first i was stressed too, after a while i thought: " no problem, i can do that more or less easily."
Finally we told each other " ah, come on, we can handle that, we can do it! " and we both calmed down more and more.
so, finally we could find such an adapter and she show went on ......

back to the classroom and willing to do a good presentation, switching back from the new rearranged concept we shortly discussed on the way to find that line-adapter.

next problem appeared. a well known and widely beloved thing, called screen-resolution.
and the story went on. 600 x 800 ? 1024 x 768? no centered screen? why a video-mode? huuh!
i was a bit down with my nerves again.
a class-mate helped a lot to solve that problem, ... but it was not really satisfying for me.
i decided innerly to put away all that technical-garbage and do the presentation free and also without technical aids. Marina didn´t like that idea really. i could understand her. so, we both switched back again to the former concept we discussed while we were on the adapter-odyssee.

finally, after a while we also could solve that beamer and screen-resolution problem.
switching back to the old presentation-concept again.
"hmm, that is surprising me now, how flexible we are! switching here and there, back and switching somewhere!" *ironically thoughts on myself and the thoughts: "what will happen next!? "*

there was not much more, .... beside the problem, that the network-cable was not working.
so we had to use the wireless-lan. in that case we could not show a movie-clip we wanted to show.
fortunately i had some of the html files on my hard-disk and the telnet-session didn´t need much traffic. so it worked at least partly. some other things we wanted to show we had to cancel and finally we had to rearrange and adapt our presentation slightly from time to time and situation and topic.

i must admit, after switching between two concepts in 20 minutes many times and rearranging the presentation while talking i lost a bit the plan of all and it took much energy and concentration with which we were charged before we started.

well, all in all, i think, under such circumstances we surprisingly did our jobs more or less not so bad and
after all we got a perfect lesson for our presentation-future!
what i will do in future for sure is:

"always check the technical stuff before! the best would be to check it twice!
the very best, maybe to check it trice! "

i think it could be also a good idea to have a presentation in once´s backhand which can be done in case of problems without technical aids. in our situation this would have given a lot more safety, less stress and more space for having joy with the presentation itself.

H