Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Better Culture through bettakultcha

So! Last night was Bettakultcha, which I'm sure you're all thoroughly sick of hearing about now. 15 presenters, five minutes, twenty slides on a timed 15 second turnover. We had presentations about ideas, about narcissism in social media (which was brilliant, to be honest), about "how I got to here" from two different comedy duos (one was great, the other a total car crash, both loaded with energy and some great jokes), an interesting talk on how online communities can interface with the physical space they occupy, a really funny bloke ranting on about antienvironmentalism ("sort out the infrastructure! If you can't afford to mow a roadside bank, then don't put up a sign saying that it's a 'protected natural habitat' to tick the 'green' box!" and suchlike), a former Tory candidate talking about gig photography, an inspired talk by someone who runs a "travelling library", ie a suitcase full of books that she drags to events and people can go & borrow books from it, and many more besides. And my talk, too, about cake, which seemed to go down quite well and I got some great laughs (and an unexpected one that threw me a bit). I've made the slides available here on google docs, if anybody is interested; at some point there will apparently be video. I've already been asked to repeat the talk elsewhere, and the number of people who came up afterwards to tell me they liked it was beyond counting.

Outstanding food on the night was provided by Salsa Mexicana and Sunshine Bakery, which you heard about a couple of weeks ago, and the whole event was at Temple Works, which again I'm sure you're sick of hearing about. Frankly, for £2.50 this was a seriously top drawer evening. It also reminded me just how much I love performing in front of a live audience; it's been about 10 months since I last did something in front of people and I was seriously hungover on that occasion so didn't really enjoy it, but last night was fantastic. The buzz is awesome, and for only 5 minutes on stage I came off feeling a couple of feet taller, nerves jangling, twitchy as hell (far more than when I spent the day drinking coffee) and I can't remember half of what I said. It's an excellent feeling, and I really have to repeat it. November 18th, here we come...

2 comments:

  1. I was on a train back from London, shame to have missed it. Will keep an eye out for the video when it surfaces. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glad you enjoyed it, loved your presentation. Never thought about the science of cake before, just like the taste!

    ReplyDelete