Lotusphere 2011 as a speaker (part 5 of 7) #ls11

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Lotusphere 2011 as a speaker (part 5 of 7) #ls11

Being a speaker at Lotusphere 2011 is an honor each time any session gets selected. I had the pleasure of speaking again this year for a few sessions in the Best Practices track. What they are does not matter for this post. Here is some thoughts.

Starting in early September we all get on edge trying to figure out what topics we would want to invest weeks of our time creating content for.

As speakers we wait.

Weeks go by waiting for abstract calls to open. Lotus gives a week, then another week. We submit the best ideas we have, coerce new and other speakers into joint sessions and get nervous before hitting the submit button.

As speakers we wait.

once it is gone, there is no edit, no redo and no recall. You are in the mix. The awesome track managers then sort through hundreds of submissions, whittling it down slowly until what they feel is best that year emerge.

As speakers we wait.

The announcement goes out that soon they will start sending both acceptance and rejection letters for all the tracks.

As speakers we wait.

Finally, emails start to arrive and we read each one. Excitement, letdown, confusion. I have seen and felt it all. That was the best session ever! And rejected. That is going to be hard, I cant believe I submitted that. And accepted. I know someone could not have thought of this. And confusion.

We start the process of building our outlines, content and even start screenshots. Ok, most of us. A few sit back. We soon get submission dates that all final slides must be uploaded to the system. Where is the new session template?

As speakers we wait.

Days before slides are due the template arrives. We grips at font changes, require slides and graphics. But we plow through Lotus Symphony to make the best darn thing we can. People in the Show and tell track make hundreds, yes hundreds, of slides. We click the submit button.

As speakers we wait.

Edits soon come back with a quick turn around request. Days to make changes, change things. Make lawyers happy. Clean screenshots. Add more detail. Remove. Change flow. We submit again.

As speakers we wait.

The agenda comes out for everyone and we get to know where and when we present. We build our demos again and again. test them again and again (some of us) and anxiously hope it works when we sit in front of 1 or thousands of you. We build machines, virtual machines, test servers, test domains, blank users and anything you think of. Code is written in mass quantity to be given away and shown off. The last weeks are a blur for all speakers.

As speakers we wait.

We wait for the exact day and times we will be on stage. Moments before we all have our own little nuances we do. Rituals just like sports players. Pacing, practicing till all hours, checking code. Praying. Not only religious but that our vm will launch the next day and in twenty minutes.

As speakers we wait.

You enter the room. We might be looking at slides. Rehearsing in our head. We might be checking code. Testing VM. Watching a movie. Nervously chatting with anyone close. We hope that everything we have done gets a laugh, a wow you can do that, an I never thought of that or just a cool. We look for gratification in everyones eyes in the room. we look for you not to sleep. Not to type all night on your Blackberry. To have questions. To be aware and awake.

We support each other as speakers. We go to each others sessions to learn, mock, listen, participate, be amazed and see the awesomeness each speaker brings. We wonder how the other speaker learns so much on a topic.

Lotus gives us a speaker ready room, which I have hardly seen over the years. Maybe twice and I needed it bad both times. Lotus sometimes provides a speaker coach for new and seasoned speakers. Lotus makes sure we can make a hotel reservation, first come first serve.

As speakers we wait.

We wait for your feedback. Evaluations. Comments. Emails. Stopping in the halls. Seeing us later at events and saying I saw your session. We welcome good and bad. We wait for requests for more information.

We wait for the chance to take a breathe when you leave the room and hope we didn't have a zipper down, faint, fall or wet ourselves. Really. As speakers we wait.

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