Thanks for sharing that Edna and well done for getting through your
presentation under those circumstances!

I think you make an excellent point. The audience won't usually know
that something has gone wrong unless you tell them. I've certainly had
feedback that even when I thought things went horribly wrong they didn't
come across that way.

The last time I presented at a conference I was talking about Pinterest.
I must have read that presentation 100 times and yet didn't realise that
the slide explaining what Pinterest was was missing until I was standing
at the podium! Luckily I had Internet access so I just said "and now for
a live demonstration". Phew!!

Claire

On 09/09/2015 12:41, Edna Stirrat wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I like the strand you are proposing on worst speaking experiences to demonstrate that life goes on after the ground fails to open up and swallow you...
>
> My worst ever experience was being told I had to present at a round table format (which I was nervous about, but okay with), to then find that once I got to the event, the room had been changed to a lecture theatre instead. Having never presented in a lecture theatre before, I immediately panicked, gave up on power point (I had no choice in giving up on it because I couldn't use it due to shaking so much with nerves!).    I found myself clinging for dear life to a lecturn on a podium, with a room full of delegates staring down at me from a great height.
>
> I survived, however, I only made ever eye contact with 1 person while I delivered the presentation, there was no power point, no humour, plenty of fear and some pretty fast delivery of information due to my nerves that were making me talk at 100 miles an hour!  On a positive note...none of the delegate knew any of this but me.
>
> So the moral of this take is if it feels like it is going badly for you, the audience probably can't tell this because they don't know what the 'good' version of the presentation should have been  !!
>
> Edna
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: CIG E-Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alan Danskin
> Sent: 09 September 2015 12:19
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CIG-E-FORUM] Communicating with conference organisers
>
> 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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--
Claire Sewell, MSc, MCLIP
Reader Services Desk
Cambridge University Library
West Road
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Find me online: http://about.me/clairesewell