It’s been a few weeks since I presented at the Stepping for Success conference and I have bene asked to comment how I feel about it now.

I can say honestly that I enjoyed the day and the event. Listening back [and I find it difficult to listen to my own voice] I think I spoke well, not to fast, understandable and clear.  I had about 30 people in the room, and it was fun to get everybody up to to do on-the-spot polkaing and ranting.

I think the content level was about right, for those who had a general interest and those who had a more interest in traditional, the EFDSS or Northumberland. I shared the hour with Robert Moir, and some may have come to listen to his presentation.

I spoke first in the first breakout session after the Keynote speaker. Much has been written about talking in the graveyard slot (after lunch) and being the last speak of the day. I could’t find very much about being first. Here are a couple of bullet points that occur to me:

• Does the first speaker set the tone and standard for the remainder of the conference
• When I spoke, people appeared to be very alert and appeared to write lots of notes
• The technical aspects of the conference had not been fully tested

I quoted two people who were sitting in the audience: Derek Schofield and Mike Wilson-Jones. I had’t warned them in advance, butI wonder, what does it feel like being quoted? Neither challenge me afterwards, so they must be happy with my comments. What does it feel like being quoted in a presentation?

I have been to a series of presentations since and I have been critical of the presenters approach since. They all add various styles of presenting: one spoke across the display screen (spoke to the slide), another had no notes and just visual slides and another had notes which he referred to infrequently and power point. I ned to refer to my notes less and lower the word count. Less is more.

Although I had some technical issues at my presentation (Robert did not have any slides), I do believe that having slides did add to the continuity of my presentation. Having text based slides is fine, but I think that visuals (photographs, scans of books) are much more useful.

We were well introduced by Kerry Fletcher.

***Coming on 6th April! Sean Goddard’s Consequences of bringing North-West Morris to the South East of England.  The Chanctonbury Ring effect. A free Download of paper presented at  the Histories of the Morris conference held at the EFDSS in June, 2017.  Look out for the web address in a couple of weeks.***

Day after I presented my paper about the dance Morpeth Rat at the Social Dance Conference at Cecil Sharp House.

It went well. Within time, and received well. The practical dancing exercise showing the difference between the polka and rant step went down very well, with some of the audience saying how welcome the dancing was. A tip of the hat to Chloe Middleton Metcalfe for playing the fiddle at this time.

A couple of questions at the end. One about the use of the term polka by the Royton Morris Men, and another indicating that Northumbrian’s in the 1980s still did dance the rant step differently. Two more discussions took place afterwards, one about using the rant step as a travelling step (quite difficult and not much distance covered) and one about the relationship between the polka and the rant step.

Robert Moir presented about Playford and related dances in the following presentation.

I enjoyed the whole conference. A broad range of papers were presented as well as some practical discussions and dancing, I am hoping that there will be a record of the day: perhaps some proceedings?

Getting close to Saturday now and my conference presentation.

Over the weekend I have been making last minute changes to the text to make it read better and easier.  I will read it through once more tomorrow and then send everything of to the EFDSS: they need to powerpoint and other items by 8 March. This is to make sure that everything works at conference end before Saturday.

I am using some visual items taken from the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library archives. I would like to thank the library staff for their help in providing good scans and to give copyright clearance. Much appreciated.

Very much looking forward to Saturday.