No, that's not what my wife calls me. Ok, maybe it is, but that's not the point of this post.
The SQL Saturday "inbetween" this weekend event went pretty well. Lot of old friends and some new ones. I had lunch with a few new speakers which is a rarity that day of the event. As usual got to meet a few new people. I had to remind Joe Healy of our
bet. All in all it was a pretty good day. If you're looking for the session files, visit
SQLSaturday.com.
Now back to the subject at hand here. The night before my presentation I went over my session. I used the "Use Rehearsed Timings" in powerpoint. The total time (without questions) was about 35 minutes. The last time I did this session I had about 15 minutes of question and answers. I didn't realize until I got to the event that the sessions were 1 hour 15 minutes long. No big deal I would just let them go early and stick around for any private questions.
I started my session at 3:00... It was over at 3:15...
At around 3:14 I thought "Oh sh**, I'm finished?". I tried to remember if I was missing anything. Nothing came to mind. I was at a complete loss. So my total presentation was 15 minutes long. Hence the term "minuteman".
Luckily at that time,
Andy walked in and saved the session. He started questioning the audience about triggers . He brought
Kendall Van Dyke on stage and we did an impromptu panel session. That went over pretty well.
After the session was over I knew what was coming. I got the "That was a huge screw up!" from Andy. Which, of course, it was. The problem I have this time was I had no idea what happened except to say I rushed the presentation. I'm not sure where I lost all of that time though. Surely I was talking like the
micro machines dude. No one complained about anything else except to say my presentation was too short.
So the lesson from all of this is have enough content to cover your session... or talk really slow and take pauses if you don't. Just another lesson along the way for me.
posted @ Monday, June 09, 2008 11:39 AM