spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective (apophenia) – A week before the conference, I received word from the organizers that I was not going to have my laptop on stage with me. The dirty secret is that I actually read a lot of my talks but the audience doesn't actually realize this because scanning between my computer and the audience is usually pretty easy. So it doesn't look like I'm reading. … I pushed back, asked to get my notes on the screen in front of me, but was told that this wasn't going to be possible. I was told that I was going to have a podium. So I resigned to having a podium. … When I showed up at the conference, I realized that the setup was different than I imagined. The podium was not angled, meaning that the paper would lie flat, making it harder to read and get away with it. Not good. .. I only learned about the Twitter feed shortly before my talk. … When I walked out on stage, I was also in for a new shock: the lights were painfully bright. … Taken aback by this, my talk started out rough."