You remember the Active Directory Performance session I was going to deliver at DEC, but I gave up the slot so that Dean and joe could finish up their session? Well I finally delivered it via LiveMeeting last week, and it truly was an awful experience.
First, when I came into the office in the morning (around 7:45 or so), I discovered that someone had locked my office. I NEVER lock my office, and consequently, I never carry my office keys around. And all my session notes, my demo scripts, and my telephone headset were locked inside. No worries, I think, I'll just get one of the facilities people to open it up. Only none of them were in the office because it was too early. And no one knew where the spare keys were.
I still had the .ppt on my laptop, and the demo servers were on the network, so I figured I would set up shop in the conference room, and connect via wireless. I ran through my .ppt, taking down notes, and went through the demos briefly to see if they still worked. They did, albeit slowly. And in lieu of my headset, I figured I could use the speaker phone in the conference room. The sound would be worse, but probably not too bad.
And then Chris came in with all the new SEs. He had the room reserved for an all-day orientation session. Great, kicked out of another room! But there was no place else to go, and Chris and I agreed that we could share the room so long as they were reeeely quiet.
I started the LiveMeeting session, uploaded my .ppt, and was ready to go at 0830. I waited for a couple of more minutes to let some stragglers log in, and by the time I started, we had well over a hundred people joined, which was pretty nice. I introduced myself and advanced the .ppt to the agenda slide, and.... nothing. No response from LiveMeeting at all. My laptop was ok, but LiveMeeting was wedged. And so in fact was the network connectivity on my laptop. I started doing the old audio soft-shoe while I pinged servers, connected up the Ethernet port, recycled the wireless, etc. I was about ready to punt when I thought to reboot my laptop. Voila! It worked. I was able to reconnect to the LiveMeeting session (or perhaps DeadMeating is a better term), and start my presentation.
Things went fine for about 10 minutes or so, at which point my laptop wedged itself while switching slides. I rebooted right away (hey, it worked last time), and... nothing. No wireless connectivity. I tried release and renewing the IP address, and there was no response from our DHCP server. I was toast. I started to explain to the (now very impatient) audience) that we would have to reschedule, when suddenly IPCONFIG /RENEW succeeded, and I was able to rejoin the LIveMeeting session. Saved! Or not...
I got through the next 5 or so slides, right up to the demo of LOGMAN/TRACERPT demo. I activated the termserv session in LIveMeeting, and zap! Everything ground to a halt again. I couldn't switch to the termserv window, the LiveMeeting client was wedged, and I was caught again having to vamp for the audience while I tried to sort out the problem ("Hey, how about those Suns?"). At that point I gave up, and told everyone we would reschedule the presentation for a later date.
Without a doubt, that was one of the most embarassing moments in my life. I apologize if you attended. I'll make sure we get it right before we bother you again.