Last Friday my boss sent me an email asking me how would I feel about making a presentation to about 20-30 people during one of our client's conferences, in behalf of the firm. They needed someone to talk about publication design to a group of editors, writers, PR professionals, that were here in Indianapolis for their annual conference. Of course I said yes, as those of you who've met me know that I'm the queen of stepping-up and proving that I can raise to occasions.
I had less then a week to prepare for the event from the time I got the email, but working at least 9 hour days, that means I really had a few hours to put together some material and show up there with some balls to talk to a group of professionals with years of experience ahead of me.
I wasn't too nervous until I got there. The place itself was overwhelming - a beautiful, huge mansion built in 1916 that sits on top of a hill, as you can see here. Absolutely grand. I went throug the big wood doors towards a room where long tables and chairs where arranged facing a wall size projection screen. I plugged in my laptop, got settled and waited. Then people kept coming in, and they would take their seats and get organized, as if they were there to experience an hour of abslute enlightment. And in the end of the room there was poor little me and my little 14-inch mac plugged into the wall so that our fagile, piece-of-shit battery would last us for the whole hour.
The first two minutes went smoothly, I was focused and well rehearsed. But then I started loosing track of the content, and I next thing I knew, I felt as if I had never seen that stuff before. "Typeface? What is a typeface?" It was all a big blurr. At one point, I wanted to say "You know what? I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about here, and really this is not that important, so why don't we just go home and start our weekends earlier, huh? What do ya'll say?".
I had to swallow my nerves and power through the remaining 50 minutes, taking questions, mediating the session, and getting through the content. And I did, without throwing up, not even once. I even cracked a few jokes to showcase my charming personality with a few nervous laughs. Everything went ok.
So sweet friends, here is to my major balls and amazing freak-out control! Cheers!
