Wait Til Next Year

Well, following up from my speech to Engineering Open House on Saturday, I think it went… well it went.

I made the speechgiver’s fatal mistake — writing out the speech (which needs some serious copy editing), bucking all conventional wisdom. Of course, I’ve never been one for conventional wisdom. I wanted a bit better put together pep talk and I thought I could get away with it. My short-term memory is decent — and I thought that writing down some key highlights would trigger things. Unfortunately, as I remarked to one of the sessions in a self-deprecating moment, that “I now remember why I never took notes in College, because I soon as I write something down, I forget it” — well I did.

The first session was a trainwreck. Hopefully I gave them some feeling of excitement, but I don’t know.

Interestingly enough though, after the trainwreck, they asked Kathy a number of good questions. Later, as I started reading more of my speech, and just becoming comfortable by the third or fourth session, they stopped asking questions.

Kathy did great though. Real numbers, real specifics — real information the parents and students needed to know.

I’ve always felt that powerpoint for speaker’s notes was a crutch. Next year I’ll be on crutches (but maybe that will give me some screenshots and graphs or something).

In other impressions:

Well, in true Charlie Brown fashion. “Wait until next year”

Of course, that’s what I said last year.