I’ve got the great honour of speaking at the CILIP “Re-imagining the Library” Executive Briefing next week, although I’ll admit that I’m not looking forward to the journey down to London — getting up at 5am always disagrees with me, plus my body will think it’s lunch time at 9am!
I remember reading a librarian’s blog post where she said that short presentations are the hardest and I’ve got just 15 minutes …that’s only 900 seconds! Plus I’m the last on before lunch, and I know how fidgety I get at conferences if the speaker looks like he might start eating into the precious lunch break 😀
Looking at the final version of the presentation, I can’t help feeling I’m trying to cram too much in… but there’s so much I want to talk about! Rest assured, I won’t be stood there talking in a slow boring monotone — I’ll be gabbling 10 to the dozen like a demented chipmunk on helium.[1]
After timing myself this morning, there should be exactly 9 seconds spare for quick questions at the end. I did consider adding subliminal images of sandwiches and cakes to the “any questions?” page to try and ensure that no-one asks me anything that I can’t answer in 3 words or less (preferably “Q: Is it time for lunch now?”, “A: Yes!”).
[1] I did originally type “chipmonk”, which presumably would be a deep fat friar?[2] Also, if you do a Google search for “ten to the dozen“, it proudly tells you that…
ten to the dozen = one trillion
…yet it does understand what a bakers dozen is 😀
[2] this is why I never tell jokes during presentations