Another riot at the Hyatt

I’m presenting at the ACCESS 2003 conference today. I’m pretty damned nervous, I’ve never spoken to librarians before, don’t know the secret handshake… and there are no concurrent sessions, so unless everybody goes for drinks after lunch this will be one of the bigger groups I’ve been in front of. The attendees are spread out sitting at tables through the Hyatt’s massive Plaza Ballroom — sitting here at the back, peering up at the tiny figures at the podium, squinting at the text on the screen, reminds me of a profoundly crappy Rolling Stones concert I saw at Olympic Stadium a decade ago. How does one project through a room this size?

To top it off, I’m more sleep-deprived than usual (and I have a one year old son, so that’s saying something). Predictably, I was fiddling with my presentation until the wee hours, and I didn’t even have the standard luxury of sleeping through the keynote speech, as I did not want to miss Tim Bray. (He gave a pretty good talk, as one would expect… but I ain’t gonna blog it, sorry. I deliberately packed away the notebook, sat back and did my best to focus and enjoy. There weren’t too many surprises if you read his weblog, but it was fun… don’t miss him if you get the chance.)

My own presentation has been uploaded… caveat emptor, it is largely cobbled together from a few previous talks… I’m especially grateful to Alan and D’Arcy for letting me mine our MERLOT material.

Off in search of coffee…