Soft landing

Presenting to a group of four eager participants is amazing.

Presenting with a noob is awesome too.

That was me last week.

My colleague and I were privileged to present at Write to Learn, Missouri's regional ELA conference.

Though it was kind of a bummer that we only had four participants in our session, it worked out great.

All four were eager, active, interested group members.

They paid attention.

They asked good questions.

They gave good feedback.

They were patient with our technology fails.

It was great.

My partner was a first time presenter.

Actually, he was a first time conference goer.

And I got to usher him into the wonderful world of collegial, conference learning.

He and I worked together over several weeks to prepare.

The preparation was fun too.

We work well together...

typically through free wheeling discussion and scribbles all over the whiteboard.

On the first night of the conference, we spent about an hour finalizing the details.

The actual presentation was a success.

Our planning paid off.

We took turns and shared details of our NaNo-experiences.

The internet wasn't working (shocking, I know), but we were prepared.

It is always important to download presentations.

Conference and convention centers are struggling to upgrade bandwidth.

And no wonder, really, most conference goers are using two or even three connected devices at a time.

Anyway, I have learned this the hard way, so I always download materials ahead of time.

Google is a great boon in this regard.

It is easy to hyperlink details and examples.

It is easy to give participants access to the presentation slides.

At the end of the session, one woman asked me if she could share our presentation with her principal.

She wants to implement NaNoWriMo in her classes and is getting some resistance.

Of course, I said yes.

She has emailed me since regarding some details.

I asked her to keep in touch and let us know how it goes.

My partner and I talked about it afterwards.

We both felt pretty positive and glad we took the time to present.

He definitely felt good about his experience as presenter and learner.

I told him he got about as soft a landing as anyone could hope for.

He agreed.

But, so what? He took his first steps as a professional leading other professionals.

Those steps were productive and positive.

That is an undoubtedly good thing.

And I got to be there with him.

That's pretty cool too...