Waking up in Noordwijkerhout
It's been a beautiful evening and it looks like the good weather will continue today for the opening of Congres Frans, Holland's national languages conference at which I've been asked to deliver two keynotes.
The first is in the afternoon today, 10 Façons Pour Rester Brancher Sans Perdre La Tête, with around 300 of the 350 pre-registered conference-goers signed up to come along. It's great, a lot more than sign up in Scottish conferences for similar talks. It's a good sign.
But this, you see, is where the problems begin. I have to do two talks, which I've been at best a little nervous doing in English, but do them completely in French. It's made even worse since, wanting to double check which talk was when, I discovered only Dutch descriptors, the titles of which seem not to match up completely ("Bijblijvin" for "10 Ways To Stay Connected Without Losing Your Mind And Why Blogging Is Not One Of Them"; either Dutch is the concise language I yearn or someone's been editing...). There's also the article they wrote about me for the Congres Newsletter, which could be as libelous as they come. We shall see... ;-)
And despite having a long-suffering French wife (she came to BarCampScotland for an hour, just for me) I'm sure many of my more geeky readers will understand the concept of not talking about the finer elements of social media's impact on education to their better half over the apéritif or dessert course. At least on Wednesday night, as I asked her for the first time how to express my concise, snappy English text in some French that was as concise and snappy as French can get, she seemed relatively interested in the subject matter. Never did get that snappy French, though. They just can't write a sentence without a verb, and a subjunctive at that, it seems.
The programme is packed and includes at least one Web 2.0 seminar. I'm about to work out what I'll go and listen to, but I'm also tempted to see if it's possible to walk to the beach in the picture to get some snaps before lunch. In the meantime, with a bedroom view of, well, more bedrooms in the block opposite, it's Flickr to the rescue.
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