This year’s MACNA, which was in Orlando, is now history, and I feel like I can come up for air. I was burning the candle at both ends and the middle trying to get my research in order so that I could turn it into a decent talk. My preparations worked, but as it turned out, the set up at the meeting didn’t work for me.
The meeting organizers had scheduled me in one of the 4 P. M. slots on Friday last, and I was supposed to have an hour to babble. However, the previous speaker used up his time and then some by the time the questions were done, and by the time I got going I was shy about 15 minutes. Then they started to signal me to quit on the hour, so that my talk was effectively truncated (not cut off) at 45 minutes, and I needed about 50. Sigh. I collapsed a lot of my slidees into a rapid flowing narrative, and got done, but skipped a bunch of slides, and didn’t have the time I had put in for the “thinking pauses” I had built into the presentation to allow the messages to “sink in.” There was a take home message of how to care for the animals, and I hope that got across. I think it did, but…
What I am not sure came across was the absolute novelty of what I was presenting. EVERY bit of information that I presented was “new to science.” It is obvious that no other cnidarian feeds in a manner similar to these gorgonians, and that as filter-feeders, their feeding method and behaviors are aslo unique.
Oh well, I can’t go back in time and do it over – and I am not sure I would if I could. I could certainly blame the meeting organizers for this problem, but that would be very Republican of me, passing the buck in that manner. I have been giving presentations long enough to know I should have taken my watch off and placed it by my monitor so that I could have taken better care of my time management. I didn’t. So, the only person to really blame is myself, so I have been mentally beating myself about the head and shoulders for the last couple of days. Sigh… Enough… enough, enough…
Next…
Tomorrow I will start writing the first manuscript that will result from the data. I anticipate the actual writing to go relatively fast, but I will also havve to make some different illustrations, and I think they will not be as easy. I have been thinking about what I am going to write for so long, the actual writing will undoubtedly be anticlimactic. Given the new, unique, and unexpected nature of my data, I am certain the manuscript will get published… eventually. The only question is, “What journal will take it?”
Well, time will tell – and so will I.
I will keep you posted here.
Until later,
Cheers!!!
