I gave a web conference today. It was kind of weird, because even though there were like 30 people listening to me and watching my Powerpoint (and it had to be Powerpoint, of course, since the web conferencing solution was a Microsoft product–ppt delivered on IE for Windows, baybee!), I had zero interaction with them until the end.

It really felt like I was just talking to myself. My colleague Les was there, but he was just supporting the technology for me in case it broke; he didn’t actually care about the content of my presentation, so he kind of zoned out. After a while I got bored and started throwing in some jokes to entertain myself. It was really weird to do that without being able to hear any audience response. I seriously don’t know how comedy get movies get made, as opposed to live theater; feedback from the people in the room is such a big part of building comedy momentum.

Doing the web conference that way reminded me of when I was in grad school teaching undergrad Spanish classes. We were required to speak only Spanish in class (a rule I sometimes broke, because seriously, they’re never going to figure out relative pronouns if I have to explain them in a language they don’t even speak). Most of the time I spoke Spanish, though, and most of the time they had no idea what I was talking about. So I got used to telling jokes nobody laughed at, and I didn’t take it personally. That’s why it kind of freaked me out when I had a Mexican-American kid in class, because all of a sudden, somebody was responding in a meaningful way. I had to watch myself more carefully, because I’d gotten used to just saying whatever I wanted without worrying if it was appropriate or not.