use Perl

• Welcome to the reality... (Score:2)

  by Damian (784) on 2002.04.08 17:06 (#6774)

  Until you've actually done it there's no way to really have a sense of how time-consuming and tiring a speaking tour is. You have to forage for food three times a day (no handy refrigerator or favorite restaurant), scout and then wait for transport every time you go anywhere (no handy car or familiar bus route), crawl down a 28Kbps telephone connection (no handy cable or DSL, and careful with that hotel phone bill, Eugene!), etc., etc.
  
  Everything takes longer and requires conscious thought and evaluation. None of your habits or daily routine helps.
  
  And just wait until you're regularly adding eight to ten hours of travel between venues (and eight to ten timezones of jet-lag) into the mix! ;-)
  
  I'm not complaining, mind you: these are simply the (relatively small) price we pay for the great privilege of talking to people about Perl. But it does explain why productivity seems to dive when one is on the road.
  
  (Though, from a certain point of view, that decrease in output is illusory. If you multiply the 3-to-5 hours of each talk by the 50-to-100 people who learn from and enjoy it, you're actually delivering around 300 person-hours of work a day! No wonder you're tired. ;-)

  Reply to This

  • Re:Welcome to the reality... (Score:2)

    by Elian (119)

    It's definitely a lot more work than I expected from previous one-off presentations. I'd planned, for instance, to work on a bunch of things last Wednesday--had a free day between the DC talk and the flight home. Instead I spent the day at the National Galleries and relaxing with a friend.
    
    Time well spent, but it didn't advance the state of Parrot any. :)