Welcome to My Ignitemare

Attending Ignite Phoenix #14 last week launched me back into thinking about a prior Ignite (#11) where I somehow found myself on stage presenting. Here’s how it happened.

One Friday evening back in July 2011, I was at a Chandler watering hole sipping craft ale. Some colleagues from work and Ignite volunteers were there and the topic of sabbaticals came up. I tend to plan vacations and sabbaticals around visiting amusement parks and riding roller coasters. 

For example, I spent two months one summer traveling to 34 parks in 18 states and riding 145 coasters (with family in tow – yeah they think I’m crazy but put up with it). One of the Igniters, who will remain anonymous, thought that roller coaster riding would be a good submission topic for an upcoming event. I agreed that this would be a great topic (for someone else) but I had no public speaking experience whatsoever (although I had done a microphone sound check once – “test, 1, 2, 3, 4…”). In addition, I have a bit of an anxiety condition and tend to become irrationally nervous even in every-day situations. Then came the assurance that Ignite Phoenix audiences were the most encouraging and forgiving. At this point there was no legitimate excuse for refusal so I gave my word on submitting.

True to my word, I crafted an abstract for the next event. The idea was to give an overview of roller coasters and talk about some favorites. Would it be accepted? Probably not – the Phoenix area (and the state of Arizona) only has three coasters. Two of them are kiddie rides and one is a poorly designed adult ride (trust me; I rode it 28 times one day – once in each seat).

As fate would have it, Ignite was more interested in passion for an activity than local opportunities and the submission was selected. Now all I had to do was to condense decades of coaster riding experiences into a 20 slide presentation. This was no trivial task but I managed to pull it off before the deadline. [Technically, it was a few minutes past the midnight deadline.]

From here on out it would be smooth sailing. Just rehearse and refine the presentation daily for a couple of weeks until the show. This is where reality reared its ugly head! The next day, there was a family emergency that required my immediate presence (to the tune of 3000 miles away). Ignite instantly became a relatively miniscule spark at this point. Personal matters took priority and were attended to. Things were wrapped up (to the extent possible) on a Thursday afternoon.

Ignite Phoenix #11 was the next day so I booked the first flight to PHX leaving Friday morning. There was only one problem. The travel was from West to East so time zone changes were not in my favor. I could make it to Ignite by about half-way into the show (probably not a good idea). As luck would have it, I was able to change to a red-eye flight leaving late Thursday night (actually very early Friday morning).

I made it home by Friday afternoon. I cannot sleep on planes so my primary goal at this point was to stay awake and not sleep through Ignite (after having been up for a day and a half). After hazily looking through the slide deck a few times, I realized that it was simply too late to do any kind of meaningful rehearsal.

Upon arriving at the venue, I was in a daze. Everyone other than me (volunteers and attendees) was full of positive energy. I was just there in physical body.

Cut to show time: At Ignite, the presentation starts when the speaker first speaks. From that point on, slides are rolling by at 15 seconds each. I had my opening and closing remarks in mind. Other than that, it was pretty much Ignite Karaoke (except that the slides were mine). Polished performance? – Nope. Timing synchronized to slides? – Uh-uh. General idea (when you’re on a good coaster, nothing else matters) conveyed – I think so. If nothing else, people had 20 slides of cool coaster pics and statistics to look at.

So why am I writing this? Umm, I’m not really sure (other than killing time). Oh, now I remember. If I can do it, anyone can do it. That’s right – if someone with no presentation experience and performance anxiety can pseudo pull this off under brutal circumstances, then anyone can do it. So if you are thinking about submitting to Ignite (or even a similar event) but have some reservations, then maybe it’s time to set aside the reservations and just do it.

In the meantime, I need to plan for getting my coaster count high enough for a second (hopefully under better circumstances) pres.