What do you do when you find out two minutes before you’re about to start your slightly-more-than-an-hour-and-a-half-long presentation that the talk was only scheduled for a hour, including questions?
Answer: Speak very quickly.
Fortunately, the fine people at EPFL both understood me and didn’t seem to mind too much that I ran ten minutes over the scheduled hour.
So far I’m one for one in throwing the remote for my MacBook Pro accidentally while giving a talk and using the remote to control Keynote. Oops. And I wasn’t even trying to press a button on it at the time — I was just moving my arms to emphasize a point. Good thing the remote hit the desk in front of me instead of hitting someone in the audience and getting me kicked out of Cambridge.
I’m in Europe for the next two weeks to give a series of talks about Apple’s Intel transition, with a focus on its impact for folks in scientific computing. It’s my first time speaking in public for Apple, so it’ll be both fun and a bit nerve-wracking. I’m sure it’ll go fine, though.
Right now I’m in London, where my first talk isn’t till Wednesday (at Cambridge, actually). On Thursday I’ll be speaking to the UKUUG, then it’s off to Barcelona for a talk there on Friday, Madrid the following Monday, Geneva Tuesday and Wednesday, Holland on Thursday, and Munich on Friday before I head home. In the unlikely event that anyone reading this shows up at any of the talks, definitely stop by and say hi.
I got into London yesterday and decided that I’d go see a play before falling over and catching up on sleep. Rather than go to one of the more expensive productions, I went off to see The Wolves in the Walls at the Lyric Hammersmith. It’s clearly a kids’ story, but I’m a big Neil Gaiman fan so I figured that even if it wasn’t exactly a complex tale I’d enjoy it. And I did enjoy it, even though jet lag and a general lack of sleep caught up to me about halfway through and I’d have to poke myself every few minutes to make sure I didn’t miss whatever amusing thing the wolves were doing at the moment. I did manage to screw up the Tube tickets on the way there, though — Hammersmith is in Zone 2 rather than Zone 1, so my Zone 1 round-trip wouldn’t quite cut it. Fortunately I figured that out on the way and found a friendly attendant who could change my ticket in enough time for me to get to the show about 30 seconds before it started. Phew!