Presentation done...well almost

I'm feeling much better today than yesterday. I needed to get all that off my chest.

Plus, I finished the slides for my presentation for Hawaii, so that's a big task out of the way....well, almost. I still have to practice the actual content and timing, and have to add more slides for when I'm giving the talk to a more general audience next Friday where I've been booked in for an hour long presentation. At least it's mostly filler and general background information that has to go in, so it shouldn't be too hard as it's something I'm pretty familiar with.

I'm planning to take a break tomorrow and do some shopping for the trip to Hawaii. There's a few bits and pieces I've still to get and it will be handy to dedicate a day to give myself the chance to look forward to it, and to remind myself that it's going to be one hell of a (badly needed) holiday!

To represent my joyous (erm, well maybe joyous is a tad exaggeration) mood, here's the latest single from Girls Aloud's upcoming album. It's called the Promise and is very 60s, yet 70s sounding; very Bacarachesque. It's got a nice wall of sound-vibe about it; very radio-friendly, although perhaps not as exciting or inventive as their previous outtings. Here's hoping that the album will have a few electo-tinged stompers with multiple bridges/verses/choruses/codas thrown in for good measure!

Good Times/Bad Times ?

I got some good, and some bad news this week. I found out that a proposal for a presentation I put in for a conference in Hawaii has been accepted. This means that I get to go to Hawaii towards the end of October for a week! Good times! How often does anybody get presented with an opportunity like this? I received confirmation when the organiser of the conference rang me to ask me some clarification questions about the presentation. He seemed really interested and enthusiastic about the presentation, so much so that he invited me to be a keynote speaker. Good times? No, bad times!


Now, don't get me wrong, this is a fantastic opportunity - especially for my company - in terms of raising the company profile - and to be invited as a keynote speaker is very prestigious. It's generally offered to people who have a lot of experience in research and in their field, and are generally considered experts in their respective areas. This is what makes me nervous. No, not nervous, terrified!

I get nervous at the best of times, when I give presentations. Generally, the nerves pass as soon as I start to talk and I ease into it. But this is a whole other kettle of fish than a simple presentation. It is an address to all the attendees at the conference, setting the theme for the particular session I'm speaking at, so if it goes badly, it's not as if I can slink off into the lei-filled night unnoticed. I know, as everybody has been saying to me, it will probably go fine, but it really is challenging my self-confidence and pushing it to the limit, so much so that after the aforementioned phone call I was on the verge of some sort of panic-attack. I literally felt weak at the knees and weirdly upset. As I've said I do get nervous and anxious occasionally, but nothing like this, and on the occasions that I have become extremely nervous I'm completely aware of the fact that it is nerves that are affecting me. It took me a while to realise that the prospect of being a keynote speaker simply terrifies me. In the past, if a talk didn't go particularly well, it only reflected on me poorly. However, this time around I'm not only speaking about my own work and findings, but I'm also speaking on behalf on my company, so I have an even greater responsibility to do well. This is the first time the company will have been represented on an international scale and as they say, first impressions are often everything.

To say I am shitting myself slightly, is a complete understatement.

San Sebastian

Here's just some photos from my trip to San Sebastian. It's such a beautiful place to visit, plus it was all-expenses paid and all I had to do was do a crappy 10 min presentation. Although it is a bit shitty going to these places on your own, especially when you don't speak the language and most people you're with don't speak English and you have to go out to dinner with them, while they all chat away telling jokes and all you can do is just sit there and smile along.

On the last night, completely against character, after paying €3.50 for what I thought was a glass of wine, when it was in fact the price for a whole bottle (which I, of course, polished off), I ended up going to a bar to have a drink, got chatted up by two tranny-hookers, then met some random people along the way (from here its pretty vague) and headed along to a party with them in a different bar before finally crawling back to the hotel at around 4am. Ah, good times!