Conferenced Out

I know that it's only two in the last few weeks, but I feel conferenced out. I didn't go to as many panels at PCA as I should have, but I think my brain is a bit full. I love the PCA conference, though. It's fun, it's supportive, it's relatively low-key.

My presentation, I think, went pretty well. I realized when I got in the room that I had twenty minutes but there were four presenters so I really needed fifteen. Not sure what I was thinking before then -- I knew there were four of us, but I had 9.5 pages. I just had in my head that I need 9 pages for a presentation, but that's almost 20 minutes. So I had to cut three pages on the fly. And I went first.

Also, the morning of my presentation I woke up to no power. We got almost a foot of very wet heavy snow the night before and had lost power. That meant no shower, no train schedule, and no printed copy of my presentation. I was pretty close to not going. I was going to have to catch the train to Boston, but the last train left at 6:20 -- ten minutes before I started my presentation. Billy and I were going to have to wait three hours for the bus and not get home until almost 1 in the morning. That all seemed like the universe telling me not to go.

So I called Mike G, who was planning to go to my presentation, to tell him that I didn't think I was going to be there. "Why?" he asked. I explained, and he told me that he and his friend Marie were driving down and back after my presentation. So he gave Billy and me a ride. Why? Cuz Mike G is the man. A very thoughtful man.

So we went, I presented, and it went well. An interesting audience, but some decent questions, and I think I handled them well. But very much ready for a conference break.