Saturday I was scheduled to do a 1 hour presentation “Tales From A Model Technology Classroom” at the Nevada Technology Leadership Conference. That was great because Ian Jukes was doing several presentations after his keynote and I would have a chance to sit in on at least one and then spend the afternoon seeing several other sessions. When I arrived however, I was informed that I had one of the very few presentations on blogging and Web 2.0 apps and could I do that 2 hour presentation (scheduled for Sunday) this afternoon too. I was 90% ready to do that, but had no handout – the wiki I was making for it was not finished – because I was planning to finish that that night after I had a “feel” for the conference – but I relented and said I would do it.

Here’s the irony – the room I presented in had desktops for 35 and seating for probably 15 more people – but I only had seven participants. I had 10 minutes to set-up for the presentation, there was no way to attach my laptop to the projector or sound system – so I had to run the presentation (starting 10 minutes or so late) from the wiki links on the desktop in the room – which was not logged into the network because the last presenter in the room had shut it off (I figured that out – the log-in was posted on a poster on the back wall) – it went OK, but with such a small group in such a large room there wasn’t a lot of “chemistry” or feedback from the attendees. I did hear from one today though that they had already set up their own wiki and were amazed how easy it was.

Contrast that with today – I did the same (but tweaked) presentation with a finished wiki in a room with computers for 12 – I had people sitting on the floor – standing in the back and probably 10 or more people came late, saw the crowd and left – all my equipment hooked up just fine – the presentation went off without a hitch and was very well received by those in attendance.

Presenting is messy!