Nervous For No Reason

making my first "demo" tape

How hard can it be?
I'm terribly excited and nervous about an interesting opportunity. I've been invited to produce a five-minute demo presentation to a web-based training outfit, LearnVisualStudio.NET. This demo is just to see if I have the right stuff to make other longer presentations on my topic of choice, using Oracle database server with Visual Studio. My impression at this point is that this modestly paying gig is mine to lose based on this demo.

I did a little practicing last night with the recording software, and I was quite humbled by how whiny my voice sounds, how scattered my rambling seems and the overall difficulty in doing something I'd feel absolutely comfortable doing in person in front of a hundred folks.

Ideally, I'm supposed to take the demo content in the same direction I'd like to go with my lengthier presentations. The problem with that is, I'm not clear on where I want the eventual content to go, and I don't have the time to plan it out before doing recording my demo today. So, I'm going to wing it as little as possible, but I have no choice to abandon most of my normal caution with these sorts of things.

[update 2007-11-30] I never did complete my demo; it was too awkward and unsatisfying. I guess I'll wear my xenophobic persona a while longer.