A new challenge

On Thursday, I delivered a two-hour lecture on Internet Marketing for my network of small-business women.

The network's board had been looking for somebody to do a lecture on the subject, but the person who had been recommended to us was not interested. I'd been to a couple of similar lectures and figured I could do something like that myself. It's been years since I led trainings with the San Diego Tracking team, and I've never done much public speaking in Swedish, but I figured I could do it.

It's a subject that I'm interested in, and I spent quite a bit of time gathering information and putting together a PowerPoint presentation. The PowerPoint part took a lot longer than I thought, taking up pretty much all of my working hours for the week preceding the presentation.

I'd originally planned on practicing by giving the lecture to a friend on Wednesday. We had a hard time getting our schedules to sync, so we ended up calling it off. As it turned out, I didn't even have a complete draft of the presentation until noon on Thursday. I spent the afternoon making fine adjustments to the animation and graphics. An hour before I'd planned to leave the house, I made the final saves, and went to print out my notes. Much to my horror I discovered that there was no way to print the notes without printing them together with the slide, one per page. That would mean 74 pages! I probably didn't have time to print that many pages, and I was already getting a low ink warning on my printer, so that wasn't an option. So instead of eating dinner and fixing my hair, I copied and pasted my notes, one at a time, into Word so I could print them out on four pages. I packed my laptop, threw on my clothes and a little makeup, and I finally made it out the door 10 minutes late.

My lecture was at a school, and while our access was through the main door, it was far from obvious which door that was. I taped a flyer on the door, but there were already people wandering around. Because it was hard to find and there were people who had said they were coming who weren't there, we waited. Unfortunately there were several people who did not show up, so there were only 12 people. I'd been hoping for more, but considering turnout at out network's events over the past year, 12 wasn't bad, and it included 4 first-timers.

We started the lecture 15 minutes late. I felt like I was off to a slow start, and the first few slides felt awkward, but I soon got into the groove. The first half of the presentation took one hour, then we had a break for coffee. 20 minutes later, I started up again. People had a lot of questions, especially about Facebook, and soon we were about to get locked in when the automatic alarm came on. I had to breeze through the last 15 slides, but then we packed up and got out just in time.

The next day, I was thrilled to find e-mails and Facebook peppered with comments praising my presentation. One does not get rich delivering lectures like this, but after spending so much effort on preparation, I do hope to be able to deliver it a few more times for other groups.

Next month, I'll be giving a lecture, also for entrepreneurs, on the use of pictures in marketing. I'm also thinking about doing a photography workshop for the same demographic.

Bonus points for Beethoven

We saw The King's Speech the other day--fantastic movie! Reviews of the movie abound, so I won't bother with another recap. I'd seen some trailers and thought it looked interesting, then I saw my friend Romy's review and absolutely had to see it.

I love that it's based on a true story, and Colin Firth was incredible. I can imagine that it's a lot easier to fake an exaggerated stutter than to portray the tension and exertion of one trying oh-so-hard not to stutter. Reviews of the movie abound, so I won't bother with another recap. For me, the icing on the cake was the exquisite use of Beethoven in this movie. Now the allegretto from Beethoven's seventh symphony is hardly obscure, but in the climactic scene of The King's Speech, it was absolutely perfect. It starts off quietly, carefully, but not tentative, yet with underlying strength and determination. Then it builds, gaining confidence until it soars in triumph, all the while perfectly timed with the speech.

I was tickled to find out that I was not the only one who was thoroughly moved by this scene's use of Beethoven. This article even contains a link to the music.

I also saw Eat, Pray, Love recently, another movie for which I had high hopes. Unfortunately this one did not quite live up to my expectations. I haven't exactly read the book, but I did the next best thing. I listened to it on CD, all 11 CD's of it, read by the author. Needless to say, this took quite some time because I listened only in my car, and only when I was alone for more than a few minutes. By the time I was done and returned it to the library, I felt like I was losing a friend.

Julia Roberts was good, as usual, and the photography was nice, but I was hoping it would be more like the book. I guess that's the price one pays for compressing it down into 133 minutes.

I've also been watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Or I should say, I've been trying to watch this. I think I've tried three times now, and I fell asleep every time. Some people might find this blasphemous, but I've been getting less and less into Harry Potter with each movie, and I think he's finally lost me. I think I like the idea of the Harry Potter stories more than I like the actual films.

M & B's Excellent Adventure

Last week we sent to see a slide show hosted by the local church. Normally we don't attend church events, but we were invited by our neighbors to see pictures from their trip to South America. It was so cute to see this retired couple recount their great adventure. Being dairy farmers, they had not had much opportunity to travel. B's brother has lived in Ecuador for a long time, but they'd never been to visit. Speaking neither English nor Spanish, the idea of foreign travel was daunting to them. Luckily M&B's kids decided that they were going to visit their uncle. They'd bring their own kids and their parents too for a real, multi-generational family adventure.

M&B were skeptical at first , but they soon realized that they were unlikely to get a better opportunity. For months, I saw them in training with their walking sticks on our dirt roads, not knowing what had sparked their sudden enthusiasm for walking.

I'm not going to go into the details of their trip, but I'll say that it moved me to see them showing pictures of the huge airplane that took 400 passengers. How easy is it to take things like that for granted? For one who's been traveling internationally since before I can remember, I was touched to relive the experience through their eyes.

They went to the Galapagos Islands, a big city, small towns, and a resort in the Andes. They encountered weird and wonderful plants, wild animals that were not the least bit scared of humans, and extraordinary scenery. They stood on the equator where they experimented with balancing eggs and pouring water down drains. They ate things they'd never dreamed of tasting. And after a few weeks, they returned safely home with suitcases full of souvenirs and a whole new perspective on the world.