If you can read this, it means I safely checked into my San Diego hotel, & my room has a decent Internet connection. Woo hoo! Now to see if I can extend it for an additional night, & then off to explore the conference area, hoping to get into the actual room of my lecture. I'll be updating this blog post as I'm able (assuming the conference hotel has decent WiFi too.
(4:30pm?)
6:16pm
Just got back from the convention center. First I successfully extended my room here for another night, & unloaded all my junk. At the convention center, I entered the exhibition area, & the first booth I saw was AiG's, & was able to greet the workers, one of which was Dr. Terry Mortenson. That was fun! Then I picked up the printed program, thrilled over seeing my name in print as I always do, & my badge-holder, & found "my" room. I was expecting the 40-seat "theatre" arrangement, & that's what was there ... actually 41 chairs but with plenty of standing-room. The podium is in a corner of the room, so I set camcorder #2 in the opposite corner on the floor in front of the chairs, & began recording. I recited 2Ch31, & practiced walking around the chairs ... 3 rows with an opening in the center where the overhead projector resides. Then I moved it to the floor in front of the projector stand, & finally to the back corner of the room in a flyer-distribution stand/thing. I'm disappointed that the podium is only big enough for a laptop, & not for my paper-binder. Not sure how that's going to work out tomorrow. I haven't watched any of it yet, but will after posting this. I then began practicing my presentation, albeit without my paper/script (reading from the original PPT file. About a third of the way into it, the door opened, a head peaked inside, & I was ECSTATIC to see ... Dr. Bryant Wood!!! Ten years after the fact, I was able to express to him how grateful I was for the feedback he gave me on Lv1. It's funny, we were initially chatting for about a minute about what I was doing in the room, & he then said, "Oh, you're George..." I was so happy to see him, that I had forgotten to introduce myself! But after chatting a while, I told him about my atheist-friend Pithom, who was curious about whether the recent Maqatir excavations were going to be peer-reviewed. Dr. Wood said that aside from the lectures he's already done & the articles he's written for Bible & Spade, he still hasn't published anything formally for peers to review; however, he told me about the plans he has for his own in-depth research next year pertaining to the finds, & then he's going to submit a formal academic paper, which will be peer-reviewed. He also told me about an EXTREMELY exciting find from Maqatir that hasn't been announced anywhere yet, & I was so excited to hear about it, that I forgot to ask him if I could mention here in my blog. Sorry guys! I'll do my best to ask him tomorrow, & will post it after lunch with a wrap-up/aftermath-report of my lecture. The reason I can't do it live in the conference center is that there's NO Internet access for the public (only staff). Even conference attendees who are staying in that hotel will only have access in their hotel rooms. So I'm glad I wasn't relying on that for my presentation. Anyway, my 2 videos just finished transferring to my laptop, so I'm going to watch them now. It's very dark in the room & outside the room, so I'll have to crank up the brightness, but I'm anxious to see how they turned out, & if any of my conversation with Dr. Wood can be heard. By the way, after he left, I finished my rehearsal, & concluded with a prayer that all goes well for God's glory tomorrow. I'm so incredibly grateful that God has enabled me to get here & do this.
6:44pm
7:42pm
The rehearsal videos actually turned out great, & I'll probably make a separate YouTube video of them, or possibly just attach bloopers (there were many) to the end of the official video. It's funny to see myself deliver the lecture to a bunch of empty seats! And I was able to hear all of my conversation with Dr. Wood. Here's a photo of us:
G.M. Grena
1 comment:
Praying for you, George.
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