In an hour's time, I'll be boarding a flight to London, England, in preparation for a Thursday presentation to Ecademy, highlighting social media for business, the rise of the real-time Web, and how the world of blogging has changed over the last five years. The schedule, as I am often reminded by e-mail and through promotions on the Ecademy site, is going to be a full one. Thursday shows 2 hours of presentation, followed by a break, and then 3 more hours in the afternoon.
In preparation, I've concocted a detailed presentation outline, with plenty of slides. Internally, I wonder if it is too many or too few, or if the focus is right. How does one plan ahead for a room full of 80 people with differing needs and knowledge bases when it comes to social networking and blogging? What if the WiFi cuts out and I lose the ability to demo any of the Web services which feature so prominently in the deck - and are planned to chew up a good amount of the presentation time?
The flight should literally take all day - starting at noon and arriving in London at 6 the following morning. The flight should be oversold, and I wonder as to the amount of power available to the laptop, should fancy strike me to update the slide deck. It's enough to make me pray that Google immediately admit me to their holodeck program, in beta, and skip ahead.
I am looking forward to meeting with the Ecademy team, and hope to deliver value to those who attend - be it with slides, Web or discussion. We'll know in two days if it was a success.