I ended up driving up to Louisville on Saturday morning, giving my talk on HTML5 for Mobile Development, catching a bit of Open Spaces, then heading back to Nashville. It was a lot of time on the road that I used to listen to podcasts such as Scott Hanselman's "Hanselminutes" and I felt surprisingly alert and ready to present for having been on the road all morning.
Unfortunately, my lack of experience speaking at regional conferences became obvious as I blew through my slides and demos far faster than I anticipated. Most of my experience has been with speaking to user groups and development teams, and I believe those environments tend to encourage discussion and questions throughout the session. Even though the room wasn't any larger than our regular user group meetings, it was soon clear that the attendees were strictly there to observe.
I did receive a number of positive comments about my presentation and hopefully everyone walked away having learned something about HTML5 and how to implement it's features. Next time, though, I'll be prepared with more content to fill a full session without audience participation. Lesson learned.
The slides for this presentation can be found at SlideShare.
Unfortunately, my lack of experience speaking at regional conferences became obvious as I blew through my slides and demos far faster than I anticipated. Most of my experience has been with speaking to user groups and development teams, and I believe those environments tend to encourage discussion and questions throughout the session. Even though the room wasn't any larger than our regular user group meetings, it was soon clear that the attendees were strictly there to observe.
I did receive a number of positive comments about my presentation and hopefully everyone walked away having learned something about HTML5 and how to implement it's features. Next time, though, I'll be prepared with more content to fill a full session without audience participation. Lesson learned.
The slides for this presentation can be found at SlideShare.
