Deepest Kent started the week with some phenomenal weather and a good, busy seminar day. The venue there is an odd one, looking something like a condemned hospital building from outside, but actually pretty nice inside and unusually for a venue (and essential on such a hot day) air-conditioning that actually works. This always helps with the post-lunch sessions as less people tend to fall asleep when it's not 28 degrees in the presenting rooms...
Present here was seminar near-legend Jim Buckley. For many years now, he's diligently been sat in sessions making notes on presenters, not just content. We all have little verbal tics, and as presenters we try to minimise them as much as possible - it tends to be an endless battle, since as soon as you spot and eliminate one, another will appear to replace it. Those of us that have been through a few rounds have worked our way through the 'classics' such as "basically", "actually" and so on, but Jim is on hand to help us with the more esoteric ones. While he's in the sessions, he maintains a tally sheet of how many times we've said various tics, and will always appear at the end to inform us of this round's involuntary words. And the winners this time? A quite boring one from James - "um". This is a little disappointing after the heady days of some 70 or 80 repetitions of "If you will", but at least he's becoming more abbreviated, eh? Jim didn't come to any of my sessions this time round, but I can tell you for free that my tics for Spring 2008 are "in terms of" and "broadly speaking". In honour of years of "live editing", here's a pic of Jim in his natural element, grabbing a quick ciggie between sessions:
With it being such a lovely day weather-wise the number of people left for the end-of-day session was quite down, so it's a pretty sparse photo I'm afraid. "Nuff 'spec" to those who stayed the course...
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