Cooked On Education

Last night, I watched Jenny Luca present at the SLAV conference live from Australia on Ustream , which in and of itself is a very cool thing. The title of her presentation was “How to catch the Web 2.0 wave and shift your school and library into the 21st Century.”

I tuned in about ten minutes early just to see if anything was going on. All seemed to be going well with the video stream, when the words “Sony Handycam DCR-HC52E Demo Mode” flashed onto the screen. In a former career, I used to sell consumer electronics, so when I saw what the camera was doing, I knew it was going to be an issue. The camera conveniently was flashing the model number on the screen, so I went to the Sony web site and searched for that particular camera. It was a fun race to see if I could find and download the manual online, and then get the information to Luca in time for the presentation to start. I am pretty sure my wife thought I was completely nuts as she watched me frantically typing and clicking (not that she didn’t think that before!). I sent her instructions on how to turn off the demo mode via Twitter.

Did I save the day with my johnny-on-the-spot technical information? Heck no. Luca responded with a tweet thanking me and that she had someone there who was helping her. In the end, she shut down her camera and someone else Ustreamed the presentation. But it was pretty cool to think that I was in Maine trying to help my friend, in Australia, with her presentation right before it started.

This network is pretty cool, huh?

By the way, it was a great presentation and I am looking forward to seeing Luca’s slides when she posts them on Slideshare.

Update: Jenny Luca has now posted her slide presentation.  You can view it on her blog here.