Tonight was another premiere for me. After having delivered my first keynote at iMoot 2013 on 26 May 2013, I gave my first presentation in French for MaharaMoot FR 2013 in Bordeaux, France. The organizing committee had invited me to present online at this annual MoodleMoot and MaharaMoot.

It was quite an experience for a number of reasons:

1. I wanted to present in French because the audience would be primarily French.
2. I had to present online using a system that would only work on a Windows computer.
3. The video conference system did not have a text backchannel and once I entered the screensharing mode, I had no idea what the audience might be doing. No other software could be used.
4. Altough we had tested the audio three times beforehand, once the mic was turned on for this huge lecture hall, all I heard was my echo which threw me completely, and I ended up having big pauses at the end of my sentences to have my echo catch up with me. It would have improved things had I turned off the sound, but then I would not have known that
5. We ran into audio issues and the audio dropped out. Since there was no backchannel and I could not see the video feed during the screensharing, I could have continued without noticing that I had totally lost my audience. So I had the “Allô ? Anybody there?” question a few times (which I cut out of the recording).

So, all in all, it could have been a better experience. Nevertheless, I am happy that I did it because I learned a few things that I can keep in mind for future online presentations:

1. When you hear your voice on the other end, turn the volume down and try not to care too much. Everything will be delayed for a second or two and thus also your pauses.
2. If there is no backchannel built into the conferencing software that is being used, arrange another synchronous way to communicate with a person in the audience outside of the software in case something goes wrong and you need to troubleshoot things. For that you might need two screens so that you can stay in fullscreen mode for the presentation, but monitor the backchannel on the secondary monitor.
3. Engaging the audience is tough if you are the only head that’s not present in the room. I had a few questions at the beginning to at least get a reaction with a show of hands which helped me to know a tiny bit more about the audience, but that only worked because there was a camera in the room that could be turned to cover at least 75% of the seating.
4. Don’t plan for too much time for questions as the audience may not have any and filling silence from the off is even more difficult than when you are in the room.

I am very happy that I had great support during the preparation of my presentation: Pascale got rid of my glaring French mistakes, Olivier, a technician from the Université de Bordeaux, made sure that the sound, video and screensharing worked as best as possible, colleagues at Catalyst and friends on Facebook gave me encouraging pep talks and a note to calm my nerves for presenting in French, and a good friend of mine and her son took photos of sand under a microscope that I could use on my first slide*.

Merci beaucoup.

* For those who don’t know French: The title of my presentation is “More than just an ePortfolio system”. There is more to Mahara than just the portfolio side as there is more to sand when you view it under the microscope. The photo even displays sand from Wellington that I had sent my friend. She is homeschooling her children, and one thing they explored for their lessons a while ago was sand. She had asked her network to send them sand from different places so the kids could compare the sand under the microscope.