Thursday, February 08, 2007

the continued oratorical misadventures of jeremy freese

At LAX, about to catch the red-eye back to Boston. Three days of talking to people here, and, unlike my last few trips elsewhere, no displays of awareness of the existence of JFW except for already known blognoscenti. Still, that doesn't mean I am comfortable enough to admit in this forum that, due to certain misgivings regarding color coordination, the necktie I wore today for my talk was actually an alternative I borrowed from the hotel lost-and-found. I like it, actually. The clerk welcomed me to make it lost-and-stolen instead of lost-and-found.

Despite reminding myself several times before the talk that, whatever else, I shouldn't do the talking-way-too-fast thing yet again, I did the talking-way-too-fast thing yet again. (Not as bad as some other talks I've given, and on the whole I think the talk went okay. I endeavored to be even a little provocative, although I don't know if I succeeded.)

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

>no displays of awareness of the existence
>of JFW except for already known blognoscenti


liar! i mentioned your post on NRC rankings at lunch and if i'm blognoscenti you have low standards.

also, i thought the pace of the talk was perfect.

jeremy said...

Gabriel: I was including you under an inclusive definition of blognoscenti.

Anonymous said...

very innovative, jeremy. when confronted with a similar situation, i'll now consider the lost-and-found as an alternative. come to think of it, i believe i may have forgotten a sharp brioni tie at the LA biltmore last year. i hope you didn't spill anything on it.

jeremy said...

Chris: As honored as I would be to swipe one of your ties, this one seems a level down in panache from your standard neck fare.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
jeremy said...

Anon: I was not underprepared for the talk. In some ways, my tendency to have pace problems has to do with my being ambitious for what I want to say in my allotted time. The more general issue, though, is that there is a massive disjunct between my normal speaking pace and the ideal pace for public presentations. In any case, if you have all the "little details" of public presentation figured out and can enact them effortlessly while talking about something that is substantively complicated, then great for you.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
jeremy said...

(Note: I have way too much going on to fret over insulting anonymous commenters. I may turn off anonymous comments again.)

Sarahliz said...

For what it's worth I was in the audience and while I noticed the fast pace at a couple of points, I didn't think it was that bad. I didn't see the anonymous comments before you made them go away but you definitely didn't come off as unprepared in any way. The fast pace may have made things harder to follow in a few places, but for the most part I think it just conveyed an excitement about the topic.

(sorry not to introduce myself yet again but you were surrounded by people after and I didn't particularly want to out myself as a blog-having fangirl or anything)

jeremy said...

Sarahliz: Thanks. It's too bad you didn't say hello.