I Am A Published Author Now

I went to the Technology For Education conference which was being hosted at Radha Regent Hotel in Electronic City in Bangalore. The preparation before the conference was "typical me". I was at my procrastinating best.

I had to present Foodforce paper at the conference. Till the night before, the ppt was about 50% complete. But that night, since I was not in a good mood and very tired(its an excuse, I know), I thought I will do it in the morning. My roommate woke me up at 5 AM, slept, and I started work. But, I again slept and woke up with him again at 7 AM.

So, now I started work at full speed now, all thoughts of creativity abandoned. But then the nature also conspired against me and at 8:00 AM or so, electricity gone. As I was working on my personal laptop (which has no battery and works only through electricity), I was in dire straits. Ppt still not completed, no hope for internet, and no hope of recovering ppt back. And I had to leave at 9 for the conference. I had not taken bath or had my breakfast yet(which was today my responsibility since I was not going to office). So, while I got down to these tasks, I asked Paras(my ever-helpful roommate) to ask the watchmen to switch on generators for me to recover my presentation. Our (ever so irritating) watchmen switched it on only for 2 minutes during which I barely recovered ppt. And then, fortunately, electricity came at 8:50, I completed rest of the slides, packed my bags, and was ready to go till 9:10. And I vowed "yet again", that I will never procrastinate my work ever again!

Foodforce2 Revolutionising Education

View more presentations from deepankgupta.

The hotel was wonderful, and the conference too, lots of great people present in it. The hi-fi atmosphere intimidated me and made me nervous. But, the talks were interesting and I forgot about preparing and started listening. Soon, it was my turn, they made me put on a mike, and I regained my nervousness. I skipped the title slide totally, was hesitant to start with, too fast to speak, infact I was blurting out things I guess. But people took interest, listened and I could feel the vibes of interested people. Then at the end, there were questions and questions, infact more questions than any of the previous talks. (Though you can argue, that it might be not because I was good but because people never understood what I said). People asked for the link to download the game, which obviously in my foolishness I had never put in the presentation. When I went back to my seat I was congratulated by people sitting next to me for giving a good talk. Chatted with some interested people during lunch. And it was a nice like any Hindi Film Happy Ending to a potentially disastrous start.

EDIT: Also I got hotel address from Paras after he went to office through SMS, since internet was also not working that day!