baby's first time lecturing at a con
So, on Wednesday I gave a lecture at an SFF con for the first time, and it was amazing and overwhelming and totally blew my expectations out of the water, and I'm going to write it down here before I forget.
So, of course I was sick the week before the lecture, and I lost my voice and was in bed and couldn't practice for shit.
On Tuesday night
roga came over and I was still polishing the presentation (incorporating the feedback I got at the pilot). She sat on my bed and I did the whole lecture at her (she held a pillow up to her face for most of it because staring right at her was making me crack up), and then we sat down together to make some changes and improvements and she was like "you need to change these fonts! and I bet you can find better pictures! and what about a little animation?" and she ended up sitting in front of my computer until 1am revamping everything.
Then, around 1am, I did the whole lecture at her AGAIN, to practice the new graphics and stuff. At that point I was SO TIRED that I actually managed my slowest time. At the pilot the lecture took 25 minutes instead of 45, at my madcap speed, then the first round with
roga took 40 minutes, and the second took 44.
I was so grateful and so SORRY at that point, for
roga who's already had to listen to this twice, lol.
Of course, at the last second I discovered I didn't have a thumb drive to put my presentation on for tomorrow /o\ Cue
roga volunteering to put it on her external hard drive, and an email to another friend, coming from the other side of the country especially for my lecture, asking her to please put this file on a thumb drive and bring it to me tomorrow if she sees the email in time.
The next day I woke up after too few hours of sleep, of course, but managed to sort out my wardrobe (the day of my lecture the weather suddenly and drastically changed, of course, so I had to scramble and potentially scrap what I'd planned to wear), do last minute prep like I wanted, and grab everything in time.
My lecture started at 14:00, but the production team asked me to be there at 13:45 to sort out the presentation and so on. And before that, I still had to pick up the complementary tickets the con gave me, including the two free tickets I got to my own event which I'd promised to two friends.
Of course, there was freak traffic. I mean it was the holidays, but Tel Aviv was unreasonably PACKED and they closed the parking lot closest to the venue, for some random unknown reason, and I was really freaking out by the time I was supposed to be there.
roga was basically on the phone with me, waiting at the parking lot she'd found and texted me the address of, while I was like I AM GOING TO BE LATE AND EVERYTHING IS AWFUL OMG.
Anyway, we managed to park about 5-10 minutes away from the venue. On the way I got a call from the production team and had to be like I AM ALMOST THERE I WILL BE THERE I SWEAR. THEN I got a call from friends who were at the ticket box trying to get tickets to my lecture last minute (2 of them weren't sure if they'd be able to make it, and buying tickets online wasn't an option during the week before the con). Except after they stood in the long line to buy those tickets, it turned out my lecture was SOLD OUT.
SOLD. OUT. GUYSSSSSSSSSSS.
I didn't even know what to do with myself. (And also WHAT TO DO WITH MY POOR FRIENDS who came down just for this!)
So I went to get my own tickets from the ~VIP section, and they gave me an envelope and told me to pick up my lecturer badge at a different stall (OF COURSE) and I sent
roga to go fetch it, and then my ticket-less friends and I did the Israeli thing where I was just like "well, you're coming into the room with me, and we'll see if we can convince them to let you stay". (I had no idea what to expect, but I didn't imagine the con would really fight me on this. Still, it was also a matter of available seats in the room.)
I sent another friend, who did have a ticket, to buy me a cup of hot tea since I was still sick and my voice was still not-great and I'd need something hot to sip during the lecture (the con provides cold water) and
roga who had my presentation on her hard drive, and my two ticket-less friends all rushed madly towards the right room.
I was a few minutes late in arriving there, of course. There was already a crown outside the door, and I held up my lecturer badge and politely pushed through like EXCUSE ME YES I AM THE LECTURER PLEASE LET ME PASS and then when the door opened for me all four of us slipped inside and one of the producers went "whoa, whoa, we're not letting in the crowd yet!"
And I had to explain why I needed THREE PEOPLE as my entourage LOLOL /o\ I mean we joked about explaining it as roga being my equipment carrier, another friend who's a doctor being my personal physician and the third friend being my anxiety animal, but lol the real explanation wasn't that far from that joke.
I just pointed at roga and said she had my presentation, and said the other two didn't have tickets and I was hoping they could just stay in the room, and I think I said it so quickly and there was so little time the producers just kind of rolled their eyes at me being weird and having an entourage and went with it.
The producers were actually two people - a young projectionist, who was in charge of the tech in the room, gave me a clicker for the presentation, told me she'd hold up signs marking how much time I had left, if I had any tech difficulties she'd help, etc, and the other person was a somewhat older producer who was my liaison throughout prepping for the con, and he was in charge of telling the door person when to let in the crowd, etc.
One of my friends then informed me that the friend I'd sent to get tea - there was a 45 minute line at the cafeteria at the venue, so that wasn't going to be an option. I then begged the older producer to maybe get me like a glass of warm water? And he was like "you want tea?" and I was like "sure, if you have a teabag drop it in there!" and basically felt awful for (1) being late (2) bringing an entourage (3) and now asking for tea when there wasn't any place nearby that I knew of to get it.
I mean I assume the staff had their sources, which is what happened, but it felt very ///o\\\ LOLOL.
And then it was time to let in the audience! There were people in flower crowns with antlers, people dressed in rainbow outfits, several dudes dressed as wizards with robes and large pointy hats! My friends sat in the fourth row or so, and in the front row there was... a surprising number of men over 40? I mean surprising just because the lecture is called "women write about war" and the program said I'd be discussing books by Naomi Novik, Karin Lowachee and Kameron Hurley.
And like, there were 6 other lectures happening at the same time, and three workshops, not to mention simply having lunch outside in the middle of Tel Aviv at 2pm, so it's not like I was the only show in town.
But anyway the audience was pretty diverse, age and gender wise.
I assumed that for people to see the presentation well I'd need to turn off the lights, but I didn't realize that turning off the lights would mean turning off ALL THE LIGHTS in the room, which ended up meaning we were in 90% darkness for the whole lecture lol. I may have come across as a disembodied voice speaking over the presentation lolol. I mean I don't really mind, but later events I went to, I realized no one turned off the light, and the visibility of the presentation wasn't 100%, and it was fine.
In the front row there was one older gentleman who kept nodding at everything I said which was GREAT, his teenage son who looked like he was trying to stab himself with the plastic sword he brought along LOLOL, a woman who I'm pretty sure fell asleep (I mean, I did make the room dark, which was a mistake). It later turned out that a lot of the people in the front row were lecturers themselves who later contacted me to say they really enjoyed the lecture.
Anyway, it went pretty great, I had to pause 3 times to sip my tea because my throat was gone (I should have asked for a mic, something else I didn't think about because 60+ people didn't seem that big of a crowd, but with a sore throat and 45 minutes of non-stop talking, it would have better if I'd had help and didn't have to make sure my voice carried to the back of the room.)
Even though I made sure to say up front that I'd be taking questions at the end, several people tried to speak up during my lecture to offer comments or questions (I was warned this happened at SFF cons) and I very kindly and politely told them I'd love to address their concerns after I was done talking.
When I was done the lights went back on, I said "thank you, I hope you enjoyed the lecture" and the room erupted into applause. I mean obviously they would have clapped regardless? But having PACKED room clap for you is still... pretty surreal and sublime.
We had a few minutes left (I was done after about 41 minutes) so I opened the floor to questions, and they turned out to be... pretty legit? Like I later attended lectures where the questions were annoying and infuriating, but mine were on topic. Do I think there's a difference between how men and women write about war because men abroad tend to have more soldiering experience? (No, I don't, lots of authors of classic war fiction were never soldiers.) Do I think women tend to be more critical of war? (No, but I think people who have soldiering experience are more critical, versus people who don't.) There were a few more I don't remember, but they were mostly legit and interesting questions.
Finally, time was up and the producers started clearing the room.
(Before the lecture started, my projectionist/tech person gave me a short briefing, in which she said "I know you have lots of fans, but please ask them to talk to you OUTSIDE after the lecture, as we need to prep the room for the next event" and I was like "uh, this is my first time doing this, so I REALLY DOUBT I have any fans lolol")
A bunch of people came up to me afterwards to say they'd enjoyed the lecture, it was a very weird vibe because I was concerned with giving people the space to talk to me on the one hand but not holding up the line or the clearing of the room on the other.
There was of course an obligatory Dude With A Fedora, my first experience dealing with a man who won't shut up and won't take a hint at a con - I'll definitely work on developing a script for getting rid of them in the future. We were kind of stuck together, leaving the room in a thick stream of people, and no matter how many other people stopped me to say a few words, and how many times I tried to end the conversation, he just wouldn't stop.
I'm not even sure he opened with "I enjoyed the lecture" or anything like that, instead going straight into "you know, I still disagree with you about..." and as soon as he said it I braced myself for the stupidity. He basically claimed that men write about war differently than women, in a way that completely missed everything I talked about during the lecture. When I pointed this out to him he went "yes, I know, but still..." SO. COOL COOL.
I tried to be like "cool, agree to disagree" and move on, but no, he just kept ~SHARING~ his opinion, and then went on to share completely unsolicited info about himself, like what sort of books he used to like reading and whatever.
Again, this was my first time being accosted like that in a "professional" setting where I didn't want to get into an argument or be rude in any way, but next time I'll definitely try to figure out a way to avoid this.
Anyway, outside some more people said they liked the lecture, and later on twitter one person told me it "totally lived up to the hype" (THERE WAS HYPE?!?)
And I joined my friends for dinner at a ridiculously expensive and pretty terrible restaurant followed by dessert at a chocolate restaurant that was predictably great.
I only realized a few days later, because I suck at facebook, but apparently a few people who were at my lecture contacted me immediately afterwards (I put my FB page along with my website as the last slide of the presentation).
IDK overall, I met a lot (or, well, a lot for me) new people at this con and it meant a lot of facebook interaction (as that's the dominant social media in Israel, twitter is pretty esoteric) and I don't really like facebook in general and a lot of in person interaction coupled with more interaction with new people online was... a lot. I'll definitely factor that in next time. Like, that once the lecture is over, the interaction with people who were there is not necessarily over, and some of them might want to walk over social media.
I'm... pretty exhausted (we haven't even talked about the other 1.5 days of the con, which were also eventful for me) and socially a little burnt out, so. I'm sorry if you've left me comments or emails or texts or stuff lately and I haven't responded! I've been a little overwhelmed and hiding in my introvert cave.
Anyway, baby's first lecture went pretty spectacularly I guess :D
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So, of course I was sick the week before the lecture, and I lost my voice and was in bed and couldn't practice for shit.
On Tuesday night
roga came over and I was still polishing the presentation (incorporating the feedback I got at the pilot). She sat on my bed and I did the whole lecture at her (she held a pillow up to her face for most of it because staring right at her was making me crack up), and then we sat down together to make some changes and improvements and she was like "you need to change these fonts! and I bet you can find better pictures! and what about a little animation?" and she ended up sitting in front of my computer until 1am revamping everything.
Then, around 1am, I did the whole lecture at her AGAIN, to practice the new graphics and stuff. At that point I was SO TIRED that I actually managed my slowest time. At the pilot the lecture took 25 minutes instead of 45, at my madcap speed, then the first round with
roga took 40 minutes, and the second took 44.
I was so grateful and so SORRY at that point, for
roga who's already had to listen to this twice, lol.
Of course, at the last second I discovered I didn't have a thumb drive to put my presentation on for tomorrow /o\ Cue
roga volunteering to put it on her external hard drive, and an email to another friend, coming from the other side of the country especially for my lecture, asking her to please put this file on a thumb drive and bring it to me tomorrow if she sees the email in time.
The next day I woke up after too few hours of sleep, of course, but managed to sort out my wardrobe (the day of my lecture the weather suddenly and drastically changed, of course, so I had to scramble and potentially scrap what I'd planned to wear), do last minute prep like I wanted, and grab everything in time.
My lecture started at 14:00, but the production team asked me to be there at 13:45 to sort out the presentation and so on. And before that, I still had to pick up the complementary tickets the con gave me, including the two free tickets I got to my own event which I'd promised to two friends.
Of course, there was freak traffic. I mean it was the holidays, but Tel Aviv was unreasonably PACKED and they closed the parking lot closest to the venue, for some random unknown reason, and I was really freaking out by the time I was supposed to be there.
roga was basically on the phone with me, waiting at the parking lot she'd found and texted me the address of, while I was like I AM GOING TO BE LATE AND EVERYTHING IS AWFUL OMG.
Anyway, we managed to park about 5-10 minutes away from the venue. On the way I got a call from the production team and had to be like I AM ALMOST THERE I WILL BE THERE I SWEAR. THEN I got a call from friends who were at the ticket box trying to get tickets to my lecture last minute (2 of them weren't sure if they'd be able to make it, and buying tickets online wasn't an option during the week before the con). Except after they stood in the long line to buy those tickets, it turned out my lecture was SOLD OUT.
SOLD. OUT. GUYSSSSSSSSSSS.
I didn't even know what to do with myself. (And also WHAT TO DO WITH MY POOR FRIENDS who came down just for this!)
So I went to get my own tickets from the ~VIP section, and they gave me an envelope and told me to pick up my lecturer badge at a different stall (OF COURSE) and I sent
roga to go fetch it, and then my ticket-less friends and I did the Israeli thing where I was just like "well, you're coming into the room with me, and we'll see if we can convince them to let you stay". (I had no idea what to expect, but I didn't imagine the con would really fight me on this. Still, it was also a matter of available seats in the room.)
I sent another friend, who did have a ticket, to buy me a cup of hot tea since I was still sick and my voice was still not-great and I'd need something hot to sip during the lecture (the con provides cold water) and
roga who had my presentation on her hard drive, and my two ticket-less friends all rushed madly towards the right room.
I was a few minutes late in arriving there, of course. There was already a crown outside the door, and I held up my lecturer badge and politely pushed through like EXCUSE ME YES I AM THE LECTURER PLEASE LET ME PASS and then when the door opened for me all four of us slipped inside and one of the producers went "whoa, whoa, we're not letting in the crowd yet!"
And I had to explain why I needed THREE PEOPLE as my entourage LOLOL /o\ I mean we joked about explaining it as roga being my equipment carrier, another friend who's a doctor being my personal physician and the third friend being my anxiety animal, but lol the real explanation wasn't that far from that joke.
I just pointed at roga and said she had my presentation, and said the other two didn't have tickets and I was hoping they could just stay in the room, and I think I said it so quickly and there was so little time the producers just kind of rolled their eyes at me being weird and having an entourage and went with it.
The producers were actually two people - a young projectionist, who was in charge of the tech in the room, gave me a clicker for the presentation, told me she'd hold up signs marking how much time I had left, if I had any tech difficulties she'd help, etc, and the other person was a somewhat older producer who was my liaison throughout prepping for the con, and he was in charge of telling the door person when to let in the crowd, etc.
One of my friends then informed me that the friend I'd sent to get tea - there was a 45 minute line at the cafeteria at the venue, so that wasn't going to be an option. I then begged the older producer to maybe get me like a glass of warm water? And he was like "you want tea?" and I was like "sure, if you have a teabag drop it in there!" and basically felt awful for (1) being late (2) bringing an entourage (3) and now asking for tea when there wasn't any place nearby that I knew of to get it.
I mean I assume the staff had their sources, which is what happened, but it felt very ///o\\\ LOLOL.
And then it was time to let in the audience! There were people in flower crowns with antlers, people dressed in rainbow outfits, several dudes dressed as wizards with robes and large pointy hats! My friends sat in the fourth row or so, and in the front row there was... a surprising number of men over 40? I mean surprising just because the lecture is called "women write about war" and the program said I'd be discussing books by Naomi Novik, Karin Lowachee and Kameron Hurley.
And like, there were 6 other lectures happening at the same time, and three workshops, not to mention simply having lunch outside in the middle of Tel Aviv at 2pm, so it's not like I was the only show in town.
But anyway the audience was pretty diverse, age and gender wise.
I assumed that for people to see the presentation well I'd need to turn off the lights, but I didn't realize that turning off the lights would mean turning off ALL THE LIGHTS in the room, which ended up meaning we were in 90% darkness for the whole lecture lol. I may have come across as a disembodied voice speaking over the presentation lolol. I mean I don't really mind, but later events I went to, I realized no one turned off the light, and the visibility of the presentation wasn't 100%, and it was fine.
In the front row there was one older gentleman who kept nodding at everything I said which was GREAT, his teenage son who looked like he was trying to stab himself with the plastic sword he brought along LOLOL, a woman who I'm pretty sure fell asleep (I mean, I did make the room dark, which was a mistake). It later turned out that a lot of the people in the front row were lecturers themselves who later contacted me to say they really enjoyed the lecture.
Anyway, it went pretty great, I had to pause 3 times to sip my tea because my throat was gone (I should have asked for a mic, something else I didn't think about because 60+ people didn't seem that big of a crowd, but with a sore throat and 45 minutes of non-stop talking, it would have better if I'd had help and didn't have to make sure my voice carried to the back of the room.)
Even though I made sure to say up front that I'd be taking questions at the end, several people tried to speak up during my lecture to offer comments or questions (I was warned this happened at SFF cons) and I very kindly and politely told them I'd love to address their concerns after I was done talking.
When I was done the lights went back on, I said "thank you, I hope you enjoyed the lecture" and the room erupted into applause. I mean obviously they would have clapped regardless? But having PACKED room clap for you is still... pretty surreal and sublime.
We had a few minutes left (I was done after about 41 minutes) so I opened the floor to questions, and they turned out to be... pretty legit? Like I later attended lectures where the questions were annoying and infuriating, but mine were on topic. Do I think there's a difference between how men and women write about war because men abroad tend to have more soldiering experience? (No, I don't, lots of authors of classic war fiction were never soldiers.) Do I think women tend to be more critical of war? (No, but I think people who have soldiering experience are more critical, versus people who don't.) There were a few more I don't remember, but they were mostly legit and interesting questions.
Finally, time was up and the producers started clearing the room.
(Before the lecture started, my projectionist/tech person gave me a short briefing, in which she said "I know you have lots of fans, but please ask them to talk to you OUTSIDE after the lecture, as we need to prep the room for the next event" and I was like "uh, this is my first time doing this, so I REALLY DOUBT I have any fans lolol")
A bunch of people came up to me afterwards to say they'd enjoyed the lecture, it was a very weird vibe because I was concerned with giving people the space to talk to me on the one hand but not holding up the line or the clearing of the room on the other.
There was of course an obligatory Dude With A Fedora, my first experience dealing with a man who won't shut up and won't take a hint at a con - I'll definitely work on developing a script for getting rid of them in the future. We were kind of stuck together, leaving the room in a thick stream of people, and no matter how many other people stopped me to say a few words, and how many times I tried to end the conversation, he just wouldn't stop.
I'm not even sure he opened with "I enjoyed the lecture" or anything like that, instead going straight into "you know, I still disagree with you about..." and as soon as he said it I braced myself for the stupidity. He basically claimed that men write about war differently than women, in a way that completely missed everything I talked about during the lecture. When I pointed this out to him he went "yes, I know, but still..." SO. COOL COOL.
I tried to be like "cool, agree to disagree" and move on, but no, he just kept ~SHARING~ his opinion, and then went on to share completely unsolicited info about himself, like what sort of books he used to like reading and whatever.
Again, this was my first time being accosted like that in a "professional" setting where I didn't want to get into an argument or be rude in any way, but next time I'll definitely try to figure out a way to avoid this.
Anyway, outside some more people said they liked the lecture, and later on twitter one person told me it "totally lived up to the hype" (THERE WAS HYPE?!?)
And I joined my friends for dinner at a ridiculously expensive and pretty terrible restaurant followed by dessert at a chocolate restaurant that was predictably great.
I only realized a few days later, because I suck at facebook, but apparently a few people who were at my lecture contacted me immediately afterwards (I put my FB page along with my website as the last slide of the presentation).
IDK overall, I met a lot (or, well, a lot for me) new people at this con and it meant a lot of facebook interaction (as that's the dominant social media in Israel, twitter is pretty esoteric) and I don't really like facebook in general and a lot of in person interaction coupled with more interaction with new people online was... a lot. I'll definitely factor that in next time. Like, that once the lecture is over, the interaction with people who were there is not necessarily over, and some of them might want to walk over social media.
I'm... pretty exhausted (we haven't even talked about the other 1.5 days of the con, which were also eventful for me) and socially a little burnt out, so. I'm sorry if you've left me comments or emails or texts or stuff lately and I haven't responded! I've been a little overwhelmed and hiding in my introvert cave.
Anyway, baby's first lecture went pretty spectacularly I guess :D
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