When your best isn’t good enough

It’s great to see the conversations and sharing continue after the edcamps over the weekend.  Motivated educators trying out new things and some new bloggers appearing.  You can’t help but feel happy.

Honestly, that’s easy to find – people that are happy with the experience and learning like to share and others like to reshare.  But, there’s another group.  There are some that are just quiet.  It’s always tough to read into this.  Are they quiet because reality has kicked in and noses are back to the grindstone?  Are they quiet because they don’t have an opinion?  Are they quiet because they’re unhappy and just don’t want to stand out with their opinions?

Last night, as I was doing some work, my friend @SheilaSpeaking was sending out links to blog posts and I was reading them.  There was one that stood out and I had to read it a few times.  It was from a person who wasn’t happy with parts of the edcamp, including my presentation.  It’s not that I think I have a thin skin but there were some legitimate concerns expressed in the post.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, there were a few Plan Bs that were in place to make the edcamp in Tilbury work.  I’m not sure how things were on the other end.  As I was setting up, I realized that I had left my computer remote control at home and I knew exactly where it was – I had been practicing for my talk and set it down on my desk.  It didn’t get packed.

I did want to practice before going live.  When @Cowpernicus and I had originally planned, the talk was going to be about something that I’ve very passionate about – taking control over your own professional learning, reading, sharing, connecting, building, …  It was a presentation that I’d be comfortable giving to my peers and what I gave at ECOO.  They expect the nerdy/technical from me.  This audience was a bit different and so I planned to tone it down a bit.

Then, there was the time thing.  I was supposed to go from 1:00 to 2:00.  On the Tilbury end, the organizers decided to delay the start until a group that had gone for lunch returned.  From reading this post, it was a 19 minute delay.  It didn’t seem to be a problem in Tilbury as everyone was busy chatting and sharing away.  So, once we got started, I had lost that time.  There are two things that you really should honour – remember to start on time and remember to end on time.  So, on the fly, I tried to save some time to make sure that I ended right at 2.  There were things that fell to the wayside.

It was a little bizarre speaking to a live audience and to another group further up the 401.  I couldn’t see the other end so had to rely on the visual feedback from the group right in front of me.

At the end, I did feel pretty good about things.  There were lots of new followers on Twitter and great conversations and feedback from the folks at the school.

The one thing that nobody noted but I’m incredibly self-conscious about are my arms.  I swear that, if I had feathers, I could take off.  It’s a part of me that I can’t come to grips with.  They’re always moving.  I’ve tried the usual tips – put one hand if a pocket, hold a pen in one hand, put my arms behind my back – nothing works to date.  If you have a suggestion, I’d love to hear it.

As I read the blog post, it’s obvious that there were concerns.  It would be easy to ignore and move on but it would be hypocritical to not learn from them.  Points noted.