Friday, August 06, 2010
Survived the first one
It really is a case of "one down and one to go". It's been a long time since we presented in Spanish and our fragile command of functionality has slipped a notch or two -- which is tricky when you're starting out from fragile. Even though the theme, "Digital literacy practices of networked youth", is one we are reasonably at home with, it was hard work negotiating the Spanish. We let the slideshow carry as much of the weight as possible, and it got us through, together with a lot of good will from a generous and sympathetic audience.
The set up was interesting. The slideshow was not linear, and the projection point was 6 or 6 rows back in the tiered auditorium. We couldn't have the computer on stage because there was no cable of the required length, and we could not have someone else do the clicking because it was too easy to get lost. Moreover, there was no sound system to run off the computer. We'd anticipated possibilities pretty well, as it turned out, so we had carried a neat wee set of Creative speakers with a power adapter from Mexico City. Augmented by Michele's microphone from the body of the auditorium we got out perfectly acceptable sound. I spoke from one side of the stage for the bits I was taking the lead on, and Michele spoke from her location at the projection point.
Once we were under way it was fine, although the script, already long in English, was on track for going over time in our versions of Spanish. As we reached the deadline for the talk I said to Michele that we'd have to cut the example of the bicycle stunts video creators, and the audience - incredibly generous -- came back, almost in unison, "no, go on". So we did. Although the talk was truncated near the end we did cover all the main points we had hoped to cover.
Which reminded us of how nice it is to be back in Mexico -- as if we needed reminding.
