Waxing Lyrical

My first international presentation was at Scotch on the Rocks this year and I had a wonderful time. I must admit I was very nervous prior, not only from the general fact of presenting but because a) my talk was a little "fluffier" than most, as it was more soft skills based than technical, and b) because I was worried I wouldn't pull off the magic tricks I worked into the talk :)

As it turned out it went brilliantly - the talk and content were really well received, and the tricks went over nicely. I had three tricks during the talk, each of which were used to highlight or illustrate points, and I managed not to completely mess them up, which was nice :) One of the highlights of my entire trip was the look on Adam Lehman's face when I tossed a ball of paper into the air and made it burst into flame... a couple of feet from where he was sitting :) His reaction brought a lot of laughs, and made it a great intro trick to grab people's attention. As it turns out Adam is a perfect audience for magic, and I had a lovely time exhausting my entire repertoire of tricks while drinking over the next couple of nights.

After the talk I was really encouraged to have a lot of people thank me and make comments on the talk - I got some great feedback from the more experienced crowd and various luminaries in the audience, and some really inspiring comments from the junior and mid level developers. It seems the majority of the audience was made up of people who were working for corporations whose main focus is not necessarily IT or the web, rather than being consultants themselves or working in a development studio. This was great from the point of view of the talk, and through it I got to meet a lot of Scottish, English and European developers.

So thanks to all who attended, and especially all those who made nice comments afterward! Hopefully I'll give this talk at WebDU next year, and be back at Scotch with another one.

Adam, I promise not to singe your eyebrows next time...

well, not on purpose anyway.