What’s The One Thing A Technical Presenter Doesn’t Need?

A case of laryngitis.

Yup. As I mentioned yesterday, my voice got a little flaky towards the end of yesterday’s SQL Tricks presentation here at TechEd EMEA 2008 Developers. By the time I got back to the hotel to call Gale and the family, pretty much all I could do was click and squeak.

Not a great situation.

A combination of hot baths, warm salt water gargles, hot tea, Aleve, and silence (the last by far the most difficult) at least got me to the point where I was able, with the aid of a microphone, to communicate in an amplified croak during today’s Real-World Indexing Strategies presentation. I was very apprehensive about this state of affairs, which turned out to be needless. The delegates in attendance were remarkably understanding of my circumstances and very generous in their comments.

Indeed, the primary issue with the talk was that I had another 30 minutes’ or so worth of material left when we concluded. I think in the future I’ll either schedule 2 hours for this session, or split it into two 75-minutes sessions and go a little slower (one of the attendees commented that there was a lot of material to assimilate and that the session felt somewhat rushed; I have no problem agreeing with that assessment).

Tomorrow I’ll be offering my final presentation, the second offering of SQL Tricks, at five o’clock local time. Hopefully my voice will by then be back from its brief European vacation.

More soon..

     -wp