almost death by power point

So the main reason I came to Seoul was to do a seminar today on a military framework I support. I put together some slides, which were revised all Sunday night, which is why I didn't get any sleep. I thought I was presenting to 50 people.

I show up at the seminar and find out there's 200 people. I only had half the time I thought to do my presentation because it was being interpreted. My computer mouse died right as I was revising my presentation, 10 minutes before I had to give it. The interpreter was freaking out that she didn't have a paper copy to translate from because I couldn't get the copy off my computer without a mouse.

Anyway, those issues were overcome, but then right before my presentation they showed this cartoon about a knight slaying a dragon. I was standing at the podium like what the fuck is going on? At the end of the cartoon the woman running the seminar looked at me and was like "Go!" because the time schedule was so tight.

I fully admit to bungling my way through the presentation. Because of the computer problems and slide changes I didn't get to practice doing the presentation with the interpreter, and it was really hard. She was translating me almost sentence for sentence, and would sometimes interrupt me before I was finished talking to interpret and I would lose my train of thought. Not that I blame her and she did a very good job, it was my lack of experience presenting with an interpreter that was the problem. They did laugh at the one joke I made, and, when I realized the audience was totally confused by my presentation, I ended it and opened the floor to discussion.

It turns out, the audience's confusion was caused because they thought I was presenting on some other topic. Seems my compadres at the company I work for switched my topic without telling me.

The interpreter had warned me beforehand that no one would ask questions so not to even ask if anyone had a question. But, with time left over and the audience looking at me in a confused manner, I figured, why not? The first question was "why didn't you present on X topic and why did you present on Y topic". Yeah. Don't know the answer to that one...

Surprisingly, I got a lot of good questions, and that was really the best part of the presentation. I got the interest of a colonel whom I'm meeting with tomorrow. And I think it was more entertaining for the audience than the other presentations which didn't have questions.

Everyone else on my team seemed happy with the way things went. So I'm trying to not feel too badly about it. And at least I learned what to do in the future.

The highlight of the seminar was getting to try 5 different kinds of kim chee at lunch.