It was fun. It always is when people show up. In this case, out of ten people, I “only” knew three. Which is a record of some sort, since Maribor is not my standard theater of operations. I guess Kibla did her job. Thank you, Marko!
A colleague of mine from the faculty gave me and Baya a ride to Maribor. Which was super-fine and dandy. She also promised to be at the lecture and even bring a friend (see –> elder sister).
Whenever I am in Maribor, I am amazed at its beauty. I know that this is usually not the thing you would hear from someone who is living in Ljubljana, but I think Maribor has more eye-candy than Ljubljana. The lack of photo-material from the trip is due to the fact that we only stayed for a couple of hours and then hitched the train back. Will do better in January. Why January? Read on!
The crowd was interested and very colorful. We had students (3), elders (2) and middle-aged (5) people. They asked sensible questions and (hopefully) got sensible answers. Always nice to see people are genuinly interested in something they never heared about before.
Something does bother me. The whole lecture is “too” long. Inadvertly, I cut stuff from it to keep it running at 2 hours. What I should do is cut the lecture in two parts, theory and practice and make it 6 hours (3h/part) long. I am just wondering when exactly would the people start setting themselves on fire and running out of the door?
Another funny thing happened. At the end of each event, they are drawing a name out of the hat of all the people that attended that event. And my lucky hand drawed the same colleague that gave me a ride to Maribor. Some conspiracy theory, huh?
We took the train back.
Pro e contra:
+ good audience
+ good performance
+ must come back
– the current material setup is clumsy
– is 2 hours too little?
2h??? Whoa there…I’d keep it at 1h max, probably even less if you don’t appreciate people dozing off while you’re still doing the introduction. Seriously though… unless it’s actually a discussion not a lecture then there’s absolutely no reason to go on and on for so long on this particular topic.
and btw… MB might appear nice (it is) but it’s actually one of the most boring places on earth.
Sounds cool. I’m curious for that soundtrack. When it comes to beauty ov Maribor, I must admit, that is only visible to tourists & foreigners. I used to live there. It’s a boring & frustrating place. It’s fucking small. When I left it needed several years to re-discover its beauty. I agree there is some. I especially love the Lent & ofcourse the Slomskov Trg, Gosposka… But while you live there, you are just pissed by it all.
Jernej – I did the lecture for the fifth time now. Nobody ever said it was boring or that I should keep it on a shorter leash. If anything, we talked for another (half an) hour afterwards. The point is that I am trying to give them theory as well as a wiff of practice. Which brings me to thinking that maybe I should split the lecture in two parts and feel more relaxed at lecturing. And blogs are a big topic. Maybe not from your point of view, but in my case…
I agree with jernej in some way. I think lectures shouldn´t be longer than two (slovenian?) school hours, that´s 2×45 minutes. if so, there MUST be a coffee break every 2 hours. it is really hard to be fully concentated listening or even talking longer than 2 hours, that´s why. and there is another thing, I think that everyone CAN tell the main things in that time. after that it´s the matter of discussion.
a propos maribor: it is lovely town. it is beautiful and it has some spirit, but, as people before me said, if you haven´t lived there. (i am not from MB, but I can imagine how boring could be there).