Blog Speech... fail

So. You're probably wondering how my 8th Toastmaster speech went, huh? Well, here's the story...

For my speech project, I was supposed to implement use of visual aids, so I decided I would give my club a tutorial on how to blog. 2 and a half years ago, soon after I first started here, I'd given my family an informal Blogger class, and that had been a big success. ^_^ I thought it would be easy to achieve the same success, only using a projector and in front of a real audience. I was pretty excited, and I'd been rehearsing really hard the last few days...

So the big day finally comes. Annette, Adam and I show up a good half-hour before the meeting starts. I make sure the computer and projector are all set up for my speech. Lots of people start to arrive. Finally the Toastmaster of the Day begins the meeting and I'm feeling the butterflies. (Don't worry, that's normal for me before a speech. I knew I was a good speaker. I just hoped everything would work alright.) The TMotD announces me as the first speaker, so I walk up to the lectern with Annette (she was going to help me by operating the computer while I spoke.) I was pretty good the first minute or so. That's when I was introducing the topic, and didn't need the visual aid yet.

I was going to teach everyone first how to create a Blogger account from scratch, then how to custom-design it, and finally how to write and publish a post. I had a whole temporary email account set up before-hand (I didn't want to use my own account to teach, after all). So Annette filled out the new account form while I gestured, and she clicked "Continue". But then...

DUN DUN DUUUUUUN!

Instead of going to the page where you give the blog a title and unique URL, Annette was directed to a page that asked us to confirm our new account by verifying with a cellphone, or something like that. It was a totally unfamiliar page, something I hadn't encountered when I ran through my speech on my own computer at home. o_o'

I had no other choice but to fling my script out the window and tell Annette to log in using my own account to demonstrate how to blog. ~,~ (If you saw a new post from me saying "Test", or "The quick brown fox etc...", that was me demonstrating how to post.)

It didn't go at all as smoothly as I'd planned. But I got through it. I wrapped up my speech in the end (having gone waaaay over time) thanked the Toastmaster, and headed back to my seat, wishing I could sink right into my chair so that no one could see me.

Well, at least I did the speech. In Toastmasters, even if you bomb it completely, you still get credit for having gone up there and given your spiel. And the rest of the meeting was pretty entertaining. ^_^

The meeting lasted until 8:00, so I unfortunately didn't catch the premiere of the new Glee episode, "Born this way." *sad* But it's okay. Just wait for my next post... ^_~