Preparation as brinkmanship

January 16, 2014

I was living on the edge this morning with my keynote.  The subject was Big Data and I was being my normal curmudgeonly self about the hype.   I spoke about this at the European community late last year and I assume the US picked up from there.   Either way a conference of technies is not the same thing as the commission so I knew I needed to spend some time on it.   As it was I ended up doing it early this morning and finished with barely a minute to spare.  I was still altering it up to the moment I plugged the VGA cable into the iPad adapter and started to speak.  The position was exacerbated by time  spent getting the new keynote template to work, but that is something I enjoy, sad although I know it to be.

For those interested in content or template for that matter, the slides are here.  It went well, although I need to get more familiar with the detail over a few more variations.   Interest from several people about going further with the ideas.  I finished and then dashed for my room to pack and grab a taxi to the airport.  The conference programme had me fooled.   I had looked it up and I was speaking for an hour from 0845.   Now it was published I was still in the same slot but the introduction as scheduled of 0900-0915 and unless there was rip in the space-time continuum something was wrong.  I compromised in the end and went over the mental 45 minutes I had allocated but not the full hour.  

Getting ready JIT for me is so much better than preparation and rehearsal.   If you know your subject and can read your audience you want to be coming in fresh. Living on the edges is there you get to think.  If I am trying to work up something I often take a speaker slot to try it out.  I only do that when its ready so no one suffers.  However I know that I think on my feet, interacting with an audience (silent still interacts by the way).

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