Nerves

Today's spring break adventure involved a train ride into the city to have lunch with Dan at his office.  One of the perks of his job is a chef-made lunch four days a week.  Once a month during lunch, the staff has a "round table" where each person talks about a topic of his/her choice for two minutes.  Of course, today was the day for round table, so I got to do a talk, too.

I thought a lot about what I would talk about that would be remotely interesting to this audience of mostly web developers.  I decided to go with what I know..... books.  I booktalked four YA books for not-so-young adults.  Here was my slide:

I chose these four books partly because of my audience and because each of these four books evoked a strong response from me when I read them.

I was not an eloquent speaker today.  The two-minute time limit really shook me at first, and I felt like I was talking with marbles in my mouth. By the time I stumbled through the summary of Beauty Queens, though I felt better.

You would think that with my experience presenting at workshops and conferences that this two minute talk wouldn't even faze me.  But it did!  Partly because when I present at workshops and conferences, I am presenting to my peers.  This was completely different.  I also didn't want to embarrass Dan in front of his coworkers.

Maybe I'll get a chance to do another talk over the summer.... maybe I'll branch out and talk about something that's NOT book related.

Or maybe I'll find four more books to share....