Going live was a super scary experience for me. I really wanted my first live experience to be about a topic that I love and enjoy talking about so I chose crochet swim suits. Here’s how it went.
First, I started my live video 5 minutes early so that I could make sure that my sound worked. What I did not think about is that the live replay would have 5 minutes of me staring at myself and asking my husband if he could hear me. Lesson learned: Do not start your video early. 😛
Next, Since I decided to try to do it outside to reduce the number of distractions (read: I have 4 kids and 2 dogs) my audio has some significant wind interruptions. On top of that…..it started to rain. It only ended up being a drizzle so it worked out but it rained none the less. Lesson learned: Do videos indoors.
I used my computer to go live so I had my phone with me. During my live event, my grandmother couldn’t figure out how to join so she video called me……twice. Lesson learned: Silence my phone and leave it in the other room.
I wrote out my notes for my topic in advance. I even wrote them down twice to make sure that they were cohesive and that I could flow from one subtopic to the other. I did not use my notes because they did not flow with my natural speech pattern and I got lost while trying to read them live and didn’t cover everything I wanted/planned to. Lesson learned: Rehearse with my notes so that I can adjust them to be more useful while live.
While watching the replay to critique it and try to make it better, I realized I used the words “Amazing” and “Like” like a billion times…….to describe everything. Designers I recommend? Amazing. Patterns I suggest? Amazing. Yarn? Like Amazing. Then there was the word “Stretch” which I clearly differentiated from elasticity at the beginning of the video…….I used it instead of elasticity through out. Lesson learned: During rehearsal and note taking, add descriptive words to notes to make sure I am not repeating the same words.
All in all, my first live event was not a failure. It may not have been a huge success but I learned some lessons that I can carry with me moving forward. I am excited to keep at it.