I am sitting in a hotel room in Klamath Falls right now because I’m giving a presentation for my digital engagement business tomorrow. Ben and I drove about 6 hours to get here, and we’re going to drive 6 hours back as soon as the presentation is over so that I can do the Ghost Tour at my usual time.
For some reason, I’m nervous despite the fact that I have given way more serious presentations to way more people under way more pressure. I think the issue is that, while I have a lot of experience with small organizations, I have no experience with small cities, which is who I’m presenting to tomorrow. Out of curiosity, I looked up the population of what I consider my home town: the relatively unknown suburb of Altadena, CA. It has more than 42,000 people. There is no city in my audience tomorrow with more than 3,000 people in it.
I never thought of myself as a big city person, but even Bend, which I consider to be the smallest place I ever lived has 81,000 people. In the 2000 census, which is closer to the time I was there, the population was 52,000. Still pretty huge by comparison, but there were still issues in regard to race and… lets just call it personality in Bend that were less than awesome.
So I guess I’m nervous on two fronts: on the one hand, I’m worried that I’m going to display my ignorance, and on the other hand, I’m concerned that I’m going to have some kind of deliverance experience. Which may or may not be related.
When I was a kid, places with more trees than people made me nervous. Mostly because I had an extremely good idea of how to survive in the city and absolutely no clue how to survive in the country. Which was really important to me at the time. Not that it isn’t now, it just doesn’t come up as much when you’re an adult with your own credit cards and stuff.
Anyway, wish me luck.