Hi, sorry I wasn't able to join in yesterday, so let me introduce myself. I'm Alan Danskin, I am Metadata Standards Manager at the British Library, I am also on CIG committee. In both of these roles I have been a speaker and a conference organizer, so I can see this from both sides of the fence.
As an organizer, I much prefer people to ask if they are uncertain about anything. We can never anticipate everything people may need to know so questions are always welcome.
If you think you may have to cancel or will be delayed get in touch as early as possible. Any advanced warning is valuable for planning contingency. Nothing is worse than a room full of expectant people and a vacant podium. It is also helpful if we have time to alert delegates of a change to the programme, as some delegates may be coming to hear you and only you.
As a speaker you usually have enough to think about, without also worrying about issues that may be cleared up by a phone call or email.
I was wondering whether we should have a strand on worst speaking experiences to demonstrate that life goes on after the ground fails to open up and swallow you. My first conference paper (pre-powerpoint) was given in English to an audience of Russian speakers and had to be interpreted sentence by sentence as I went along...so all of my calculations of duration and inflection went out the window. If I had asked more questions up front, I could have anticipated this and discussed alternative approaches, which may have rendered the audience less catatonic by the end.
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