I was gone all last week to an engineering conference held by Factset – hence that ride in Central Park – and came back more appreciative of our trademarked sunny Californian weather and (relatively speaking) friendly highways. The time away from home was pretty good (it was almost like a company-expensed vacation), but the actual business purpose of attending technical discussions and presentations turned out to be, well, not as good.
Engineers get a bad rap for lacking in social and interpersonal skills, which, I’m sad to say, was evident from some of the presentations I had to sit through. I don’t blame them too much, though; I had to stand up there myself and gave a talk on Windows Vista, and it’s tough to keep a crowd of 150, 200 people focused on your talk when you have to compete with wireless internet and engineers’ tendency to zone out 10 in the morning.
You start speeding up, you lose concentration, you forget your lines and your slides, your well-rehearsed jokes and one-liners are forgotten and delivered in the flatest of monotones – that’s what standing up there is like, especially if it’s your first time and imagining the engineers in front of you sans clothing makes you physically sick. Sadly, bad presentations and lectures are the norm at software conferences, so completely messing up only puts you in majority of those who chose to speak on stage.
So, um, bye?