Webcast Dry Run

Well today was the dry run for my upcoming webcast. As I've mentioned before, this is a first for me, so it was interesting. Things went ok, but we had some audio issues which I need to resolve by Wednesday. I suspect Vista is the problem, which is nice and ironic.

The other things I learned by way of feedback as well as just things I noticed myself while speaking or listening to the recording afterwards:

• I should explain that we won't be deep-diving into any specific areas.
• I forgot to have SQL Server Management Studio open.
• I didn't have server explorer connection set up (not sure why, I set it up yesterday. Guess VS forgot it, so I'll need to set it up right before the presentation on wednesday).
  
• I skipped around and didn't follow my notes properly! I need to make my notes easier to follow (NOT handwritten!).
• I forgot to explain the Lambda expressions properly.
  
• I need to expand the references section a bit.
  
• I should use tinyurl for long URL's.
• I set up bookmarks in Visual Studio, and then proceeded to not use them at all.
• I intended to use Full Screen view in Visual Studio but forgot. This resulted in lots of sideways scrolling because I had the Solution Explorer pinned. I didn't clue in on this AT ALL during the entire presentation.
  

The timing was pretty good, 29 minutes start to finish. I would have preferred about 25 minutes because this doesn't give me much wiggle room to stray from my notes, but I suppose this will keep things focused and moving.

Listening to the recording was interesting. I have always hated listening to my own voice, but I didn't sound quite as stupid as I thought I had, so that was positive. Of course, with the audio cutting out constantly perhaps the dumb portions were mercifully absent.

Finally, the one thing I really noticed was how I sort of 'went blank' as I spoke. I was in some kind of zombie trance, and the couple times that I tripped up because I wasn't following my notes properly left me totally dumbfounded for a few seconds. I think the audio issues hid this pretty well actually, but there were a couple times when I stared at my notes for like 5-10 seconds thinking "What the heck? Where was I? What am I doing next? OH NOES!". Hopefully this does not happen on Wednesday!