Some of you know that for the past couple of months I have been ‘laser focused’ (I actually hate that expression, but it does seem to express the ADHD way I go at some things) on the presentation I delivered to The Cosmic Summit on Saturday June 15.
I have to admit that being part of something called “The Cosmic Summit” seemed a bit… daunting? … but in fact it was a very successful and engaging weekend. I met a lot of interesting people and felt at times like I’d found my tribe.
There were also times I was glad I was wearing my ‘tin foil hat.’
The entire conference was live streamed. I recorded the live stream and did some editorial work before uploading the result to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. I may have jumped the gun with all that, because I’m told now that eventually I will get a higher-resolution recording for my own use, in which case I’ll probably have to do all the editing again, but in the meantime I am sharing this with my inner circles.
The biggest wrinkle in the actual presentation was the set up on stage.
I ran through the whole thing like 20 or 30 times in order to commit as much of it as possible to memory. When I did those rehearsals, for some reason (probably a photo I saw of last year’s conference) I thought I’d have a laptop on the lectern in front of me.
So when I practiced, I had everything on the one screen: the presentation on one side of the screen, the script on the other side. That’s how I practiced, imagining a laptop on the lectern and the audience just above-and-beyond, so that it would be easy to glance at the screen and continue directly eyeball-to-eyeball with the audience.
Alas.
I discovered the night before the presentation that the stage was about three feet high – and my reference monitor was on the floor below and at the foot of the stage! Who thought that was a good idea?!?
So that’s why I’m ‘looking down’ a lot – and why I did all the editing I did – to hide all the looking at the floor.
Where I am reading from the monitor (on the fucking floor eight feet below my eye level!) I edited the frame to fill the screen with the slides themselves rather than the two panel view –with the slide on one side and the idiot looking at the floor on the other side.
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Despite line-of-sight challenges, the whole thing went about as well as it possibly could. I didn’t see all the other presentations, but those that I did see were mostly “put up a slide, talk about it, put up another slide, talk about that, rinse and repeat for an hour.” This one has an actual story… the proverbial beginning, middle and end (#NotSoHumbleBrag).
I’ll admit, there were moments while I was putting this together where I thought it just wasn’t gonna happen, that I was going to have to call the promoter for the conference and back out.
Eventually it dawned on me what I needed to do: take a very personal approach to all this science and history and what drew me into it in the first place. Once I dropped in this slide:
…then all the work, stories, ideas, theories and conclusions started falling together.
This is what all I have been ruminating on for the entirety of my adult life.
Judges, y’all let me know if I stuck the landing…
And, now that I’ve ‘got my act together’, I’d like to take it on the road….