Video: My CyborgCamp Portland Talk
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This one’s a bit painful for me to watch, for a few reasons.
First, my talk had a lot of time-based elements (audio and video), which meant I really needed my 45 minutes, but I started late, and I was the last talk of the day, so I had very little wiggle room. In the future, I’ll definitely insist on speaking earlier if this is the case. I’m a fast talker anyway, but it sounds like I’m trying to break a vocal cord land speed record to get the event wrapped up on time.
Secondly, every piece of technology that could fail did fail in the course of the talk, including the projection screen, audio playback, microphone and presentation wand. I’d never attempted a talk that relied so heavily on tech, and I doubt I’ll do so again for a long while. There are way too many unknown variables, any of which can completely derail your message if it goes awry.
Lastly, I packed way too much into a single talk. I neglected the fact that I’ve spent the last decade thinking about the convergence of my varying interests, and it’s unfair to expect an audience to catch up in under an hour. Attendees who talked to me afterwards tended to gravitate toward one portion of the talk or another, which tells me I would have been more successful if I had exercised a bit more restraint.
Problems aside, I still believe in the ease and control scale I proposed, and that idea is probably presented better here than in the presentation materials alone.