Live From New York…it’s The InDesigner!
Last night I discovered the whopping difference between sitting in a quiet room cobbling together video tutorials and presenting before a live audience: I did my first official public speaking gig at the New York InDesign User Group meeting (see the extremely unflattering photo of me in action here).
Scary as it was, I really enjoyed it. Luckily for me, it was on my absolute favorite InDesign topic: Styles. So there was plenty of passion for the subject matter on my part. I’ve been going crazy pushing styles as far as I can ever since I got started with InDesign, so doing 15 minutes worth of material wasn’t a problem. Keeping it to only 15 minutes was the challenge.
But live presentations are an entirely different animal from video podcasts. The level of control shifts dramatically. There’s no editing out of mistakes, and no matter how many times you do a dry-run in advance, what happens on stage is going to go “off script” in some way. Sometimes in a good way. Questions from the audience opened up interesting lines of conversation that weren’t part of my original outline. And the feedback from and interaction with people is immediate, whereas it could be days before I get an e-mail with feedback about a podcast.
The only downside…I spent so much time preparing for the presentation that I’m way behind on the latest podcast episode. But I’ll catch up. Who needs sleep, anyway?
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June 7th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
sounds like you had some fun 🙂
Don’t worry about the next podcast, i’m sure that we can all wait a little longer till you catch your breath, and then deliver the goodies for us 🙂
Also congradulations on your first official gig, hope you will get many more in your future carrear as an indesigner with adobe credentials 🙂
David,
June 7th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Thanks, David. It was fun. One thing it has in common with podcasts is that preparation and good subject matter are probably 80 percent of the battle. So much time and preparation goes into making something seem simple and effortless.
And thanks for cutting me slack on the podcast, too. 🙂