Category Devcons Fun LotusSpeakingStories
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UPDATE: Karl-Henry Martinsson was kind enough to remind me that this was actually in October 1998, and the Notes/Domino release in question was ND5, not ND6 as I indicate in this post. Many thanks to Karl-Henry for setting me straight! **Rock

A few days ago Alan Lepofsky posted a great blog entry entitled, "Some advice on public speaking". I responded to his post with a rather longwinded followup, giving some additional suggestions. However, another comment in the blog (by Thomas Bahn) suggested that Alan and other speakers should post their "speaking horror stories", based on Alan's #6 suggestion:

6. Always prepare and be ready, but accept the fact that things go wrong. When they do, don't panic. Be calm, work through it, the audience understands. (Perhaps this should be a blog post of its own, where we all recap our funniest stories!)

Well, I thought it was a good idea, so here's my horror story...

Setting the Stage
This was quite a few years ago, when the Lotus ADVISOR devcons were very popular. This particular instance of that devcon was being held in Palm Springs, I believe. I was a speaker there, as well as Gary Devendorf. Now this was around the release of Notes/Domino 6. I had a new book out, and ND6 was supposed to be bringing us a ton of new ways to build Web applications. However, Gary and I were there to talk about the stuff we knew best - I think I was covering COM, C API in LotusScript, and Formulas; Gary was covering another aspect of COM, and I don't remember what else (he was still with IBM at the time). Everything was going great - there were many attendees (over 1,200), there was palpable excitement in the air, and we were having a blast. Until...

The Gary and Rocky Show
One morning, I believe a Wednesday morning, I was down at the conference getting breakfast. It was around 7:45 or so, and I see Jennifer, the conference organizer for Lotus ADVISOR, running around in a panic. It turned out that one of the speakers was ill, and wouldn't be able to speak. The session was on "What's New in Web Development in Notes/Domino 6", and it was slotted to be the first session of the day (at 8:30AM). The room was already filling up, and the other session slotted that morning wasn't nearly as popular - virtually everyone was attending that session. The speaker wasn't going to be able to give the presentation - no problem, I thought, and I told Jennifer to go and get the slides from the sick speaker, and I would volunteer to give the presentation. Now at this time I was still strictly a Notes client developer, and I had done very little Domino development at all. Jennifer contacted the speaker to get the slides, and that's when the hammer fell - he didn't have a slide deck for the presentation. Nothing.

Oh crap.

There was no one else who could give the talk, and the only two people available at all who were willing to even try to do something was Gary and myself. Now, keep in mind what I said earlier - I wasn't a Domino developer at that time, and neither was Gary. We were client guys. The room was full, and they were expecting a session.

So, Gary and I came up with a plan. He had some stuff about Web Services, I believe, and he started talking about that. While he was talking I was looking in the ND6 Release Notes db and the "What's New" section of the Domino Designer Help for new Web dev stuff, and quickly building demo applications to show it off. When Gary ran out of stuff to say, I took over and demonstrated and explained what I had found and built, and while I was speaking Gary was also searching the same resources for ideas and building samples. I would stretch out my talk until Gary told me he was ready, and then it was like "tag, you're it" and he would talk and I would search for something else - and we basically did the entire session, a full hour talk, in this fashion.

Here's a funny story about this. During one part of our talk, when I was talking - I think I was covering some new features in the @formula language for Web development - Gary became interested in what I was talking about, and quit working on his next topic. I was wrapping my part up, and I looked at him and asked, "Are you ready?" He looked at me and said "Oh crap!" and had to quickly finish what he had been working on before he got interested in what I was saying. I stretched my talk a little longer so he could finish, and we pressed on.

After we were done, the room erupted in thunderous applause. They were very impressed in what we were able to do, on the fly, with a subject we really knew nothing about. Our session evaluations were exceptional as well, and overall I must say that this experience was both the most harrowing session I had ever given, and also one of the most fun - especially after it was over.

I know Gary agrees with me when I say that we truly had a good time - Gary and I have similar presentation styles, and we were already good friends off the stage, which made this experience much much easier. And I would happily share a stage with Gary again any time, any place.

Rock

P.S. OK, time to hear from you other speakers out there. I'd love to hear stories from Alan, Ed, and Rob, and Bob. And I know Andrew has a good one - about how water and laptops don't mix .