2014 A4D Meetup: Part 2

This is Part 2 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3

Part 2: Saturday Morning

7:00am came way too early. Mainly because I didn’t fall asleep until 4:30am the night before. The noise in the hotel got louder and louder with each hour that passed. From midnight to 4:30am it just kept growing… and growing…

Then… all of the sudden – it stopped.

It was as if someone hit a secret sleep switch in the hotel somewhere and all of the screaming robots were simultaneously shut down for the night.

Unfortunately the switch wasn’t hit until 4:30am, so when I woke up… I felt like shit.

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Feeling Foggy

I’m used to getting a solid 8 hours of sleep every night. I never miss. And if my body is used to getting something every day for months and then I suddenly take it away it feels rough. It feels like I’ve been dropped in the Sahara desert without food or water for a month and I’m going to die at any second. My lips were chapped, my head hurt and my body felt like I’d drank a case of cheap vodka and slept on the street.

The meetup started at 9:00am, so I needed to get up, do some version of my morning routine and go over my presentation one more time.

I drank a bottle of water and realized – – I had no coffee. Shit… wait, I  remembered hearing that there was free coffee in the hotel cafe until 9:00am. Saved.

I pack light so the only shoes I had were these black boots with zippers up the sides. I figured I’d look like a homeless person if I wore my boots and sweat pants, so I just walked down to the restaurant in my socks.

I grabbed two free coffees and headed back up to the room.

Apple Tries to Ruin My Talk

I decided to make a last minute change to my presentation and do a final mini run through in the hotel room, and I’m glad I did. Because when I launched Apple Keynote, instead of seeing my presentation, I saw the following error message.

Error: Apple Keynote cannot be opened while it is updating.

Hold on a minute.

I hadn’t initiated an update so I panicked for a second. What if it didn’t work and my presentation couldn’t even be shown on the screen? I’d have to do the whole thing from memory and that was going to suck. I got a little anxiety, but then I laughed:

“This is going to be really bad” I thought, “but of course it crashes today, the only day I will probably ever need it to work.”

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I didn’t get mad. I just went back to my adventure conversation (from part 1) and said to myself:

“Well…. this is the adventure and the adventure has taken an unexpected turn”.

There was nothing wrong about the situation, and nothing right about it either. The Universe wasn’t cursing me and I wasn’t a victim of bad luck. The adventure had simply taken a turn.

Tech Support

After a few minutes of looking around I realized that Apple had released an updated version. It must have come out that morning, the day of the Meetup because the day before it opened fine.

How funny is that that they updated the software, and COMPLETELY changed the look/feel of it the morning I needed to use it for the first time ever? Classic.

Luckily I was able to go into my Software Updates, restart the failed update (that I didn’t initiate) and after about 20 minutes things were working fine. Thank God it didn’t happen on stage. That would have been a pretty epic fail.

The A4D Meetup

When I walked up to the Meetup room there was a huge check-in table covered in A4D Swag. In the past they’ve had t-shirts but this year they really stepped it up.

They had A4D stickers and A4D sunglasses and 5 or 6 women checking people in. All of them were wearing A4D tshirts. It looked really pro.

I thought to myself: [tweetable]”A4D is officially kicking some serious Meetup ass this year.[/tweetable]

I talked to a few people and found out there were some technical difficulties with the projector so the schedule was thrown off a bit.

That was fine with me. It gave me a chance to find a place to sit and put my stuff down. I sat in the back, next to Jason and a few other A4D guys.

People started approaching me at this point.

Mainly readers from the blog. This is my first public appearance since relaunching the site in November last year so it felt strange to be recognized by people I didn’t know.

It was cool but also kinda like “What is happening here?”

Minutes later we got word that things were ready to go and the Meetup was ready to begin. I finished shaking hands and talking and took my seat. The first speaker was getting ready to begin.

My heart was pounding.

This is Part 2 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3