PDC 2008, Day 4 (and finale)

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Ok, the PDC’s finally over and I’ve had a chance to decompress a bit.  So here’s my day 4 report, only a few days late :).

I got up at 6:15, finished packing and schlepped my stuff to the convention center for my tech check at 7:40.

 

At the tech check, I learned that (a) I wasn’t going to be able to use presenter view in PowerPoint (which means I wouldn’t have access to my notes), and I wasn’t going to be able to see my presentation while doing my demos :(.  All of these are minor annoyances, not fatal, but still annoying.

I then went to the speakers lounge to chill for a couple of hours while I waited for my talk – this was my first time talking to such a big convention so I was a bit nervous.

At about 11:30 I headed out to the room (151, with a capacity of 1000 people).  I hooked up my kit to the stage and waited until noon for my presentation to begin:

Larry's talk is up next

I think the talk went quite well – the demos worked perfectly and I didn’t make too many mistakes (I missed one of my talking points :(). 

 

I knew I wasn’t going to fill the room since I was speaking (a) on the last day of the convention and (b) opposite lunch and (c) a fairly geeky topic but I was still a smidge disappointed that only 53 people showed up :(.

Here’s the view from the podium after my talk:

The view from the podium

 

After the talk, I chatted with some folks in the Win7 lounge and basically hung out until 3ish when I got together with my cousin Stacy (who I haven’t seen in a long time).  We wandered over to his restaurant and I met his wife Mindy and mother Selma.  We then went to his house where I met his kids and we hung out and chatted until it was time to go to the airport for the return flight. 

 

 

For those of you who were wondering what a PDC presenter brings to the PDC, here’s what was in my backpack:

My PDC Kit 

Left to right, from top to bottom there was:

My backpack

Lego Boeing 787 (I didn’t take that to the PDC).  Two cases for my 2 sets of Altec Lansing T515 bluetooth speakers Laptop 1 (my primary laptop)  Laptop 2 (my demo laptop).

Power supplies for the laptops, a Jabra BT620SD bluetooth headphones, a Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth headset, the 2 Altec Lansing T515 speakers, a Creative Labs talk microphone.

Headphones for my portable media player, 2 notepads for notes from the conference, my Creative Zen Vision:M portable media player, 2 bluetooth USB dongles, a USB hub, a box of business cards, my PDC badge from the last PDC I attended (1991), and a Jabra USB headset.

 

Most of the kit was there for redundancy – in case something got lost or broke, I wanted to make sure I had a backup for everything.     Some of the kit was just there to be props during my talk.

And I’m glad I did – as I was returning from the conference, one of the T515 devices (the one I own) disappeared between the hotel when I packed it and my house.  I have no idea what happened to it.