Public Speaking

I talked at LILUG (Long Island Linux User Group) about MongoDB on Tuesday, which was really fun.

Not that it started out all that well. One of LILUG’s officer’s picked me up at the station. We had… an imperfect fusion of souls. He told me, on the way to the pub, that he was sick of GNU, sick of Linux, and sick of being an officer in LILUG. When we got to the pub, he made a joke about Chinese people having slanty eyes. Ugh.

Anyway, we got there, and met a couple guys standing at the bar. The older one (~60) asked if he could buy me a drink, to which I awkwardly acquiesced. I’m never sure what the protocol is, if there’s anything implied by accepting a drink. The other guys wandered off towards a table, but the old guy made no move.

“Um, are you… um… a member of LILUG?” I asked.

“No,” he said, staring at me. Whoops.

“Um, I have to go,” I said, and went over to the table where the LILUG guys had gone.

“Yeah, he’s just some random guy who was at the bar,” one of the members said, laughing. Har de har.

I ordered nachos, which turned out to be a freakin mountain that could have served six people. They were seriously piled almost a foot high on the plate. They were delicious, and a bunch of really nice LILUG members showed up.

Once we were done eating, we went over to Stony Brook, which is where I was actually giving my talk. I’ve had a cold for the last week and I was a bit nervous about my voice giving out, but it held up and people really seemed to enjoy it.

I like it when people ask lots of questions an participate, and I had a brainwave before I left the office on how to encourage it. When I started my presentation, I told people to feel free to ask questions. “And the first person who asks a question,” I said, rooting around in my bag, “gets this fabulous Mongo mug!” I told them, unearthing it and holding it up. A college student’s hand shot up. “What was Mongo named after?” he asked. And we were off to the races!

Afterwards, everyone went out for one more drink. “To the downfall of SQL!” someone called, and everyone cheered and toasted to it.

P.S. Just to be clear, I didn’t actually advocate the downfall of SQL, in fact, I specifically mentioned relational databases are needed in some cases. It was cute, though 🙂

P.P.S. Slides are on slideshare.