I'd like to say that this is exactly as I envisaged posting this image, but I'd be lying. The brightness of the large projection screen in the background clearly overwhelmed the Olympus' exposure sensors, and when I got the file into Photoshop it was clear that the colour registration and exposure were both... off. Way, way off. Except for the apple, that was close to being right. The only way to salvage the image was to dump the colour of the background completely and turn it into a selective colour shot.

Anyhoo, today I gave a user training course for a system that I administer, hence, the cliché of the apple in my training room with some of the training computers and projection screen beyond. (And I apologise to Thomas Hughes for the title since I was the teacher, not the student.) The "Microsoft Excel 2007 Has Encountered A Problem Yet Again And Needs to Close" dialog has been omitted out of a misplaced sense of charity.

I've never felt the dread that some people fear with public speaking. Indeed I generally enjoy it. And I particularly enjoy training if I feel that the class will take something away from it and be able to do their work better. However I do tend to have two settings for that, either very good, or very bad. Today was the fist time I felt that I hit it somewhere in between, though more good than bad. I may have rushed a bit and didn't engage with the audience enough so that they felt that they were all getting personal attention, but overall, it wasn't bad.

The issue with speaking for something like 5 hours isn't one of feeling embarrassed; that's just a question of confidence. The hard part is that you have to stay focussed and thinking not only about what you're covering, but also what's next (unless you're the type of person who just reads PowerPoint slides, and I'm not) for all of that time. Members of your audience can drift off into reverie for a few pleasant moments before my stentorian training voice shakes them out of it by haranguing them about the inputs and parameters that they Must Not Forget To Make for budget. However with anything up to a dozen pairs of eyes on me in a course, it's not a luxury that I have.

Overall, I think I've earned my post-prandial apple.

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