I’m about to head off to Gatwick airport and catch a flight to Spain. I’m going to the Fundamentos Web conference in Gijón in the prinicipality of Asturias, somewhere I’ve never been. I was asked to speak last year but it was right after Web Directions South and I didn’t want to cut short my trip to Oz. This year I face no such dilemma so I jumped at the chance.
I’ll be speaking about Ajax. Nothing new there. What is new is that most of the audience will be non-native English speakers who will be relying on an interpreter for simultaneous translation. I wonder if I should adjust my presentation style accordingly (like, maybe slow down a bit). I’ve already tried to localise my slides; because most of my slides consist of one great big word, I’ve tried to get that word translated into Spanish (of course that doesn’t apply to coding terms like XMLHttpRequest). It remains to be seen how successful my attempts at cultural sensitivity turn out to be.
I’ll be landing in Asturias fairly late this evening and then speaking early tomorrow so I’ll need to hit the ground running. Pre-presentation nervousness has already begun and I haven’t even left Brighton yet.