The cloud hanging over my trip to West Australia was the fact that I have to give a speech tomorrow at work, to a big group of invited clients, on the subject of Web 2.0 as it relates to content management. Surely the biggest such speech in my career, and all the scheduled practice sessions and feedback from partners of the firm really bring home what a big deal it is. It's also really making me face up to my limitations as a speaker. I simply can't speak extemporaneously, and so I'm memorizing as much of it as I can, and relying on my notes much more than the two other speakers. I only have to speak for 15 minutes, but it may seem like an eternity, and I'm still worried that I'm going to get flustered or something, as I still sometimes do. But oddly I'm not really nervous. I just want it to be done with at this point.

Update: It went about as expected. I was a bit nervous, certainly noticeably so, but not debilitatingly so, and got through it okay. The last talk I blogged about I mentioned liking public speaking, but this one seemed more like a chore, and I'm just glad it's over.