Monday morning and I know what I've got to do. Holiday over and it's straight into the study at 8.30am to prepare my powerpoint presentation. This will form part of my interview for the DigitalCity Fellowship which could potentially help me to get my digital media website up and running as a business. First I need to decide what are the most important points to get across in the allocated 10 minutes, namely that I am setting up a spoken word website and hope to build up a library of audio dramas and also record authors reading from their own work including poetry, short stories and extracts from novels. I want to give a platform for new writers with quality work and although it will have a North East flavour I hope it will also attract listeners from further afield.
Thereafter follows a seemingly endless juggling of slides which takes the entire afternoon. It's all a bit dry and so I try to jazz it up with a few photos and get Teen1 to take some on my i-phone. whilst I pose as a writer at my laptop. One of these is downloaded and made into a slide assisted by Teen2 who also helps me to make the individual bullet points on the slides whiz on at the right time. By now, I start to have serious doubts about my capability to take on a digital fellowship. I intersperse the writing with more photos taken from the pilot recording of my audio drama 'Couple' at Core Music, Hexham which was based on Sean Henry's sculpture 'Couple' at Newbiggin on Sea.
There's nothing in the fridge on returning from holidays, so I decide I'd better go out and forage for food at our local Co-op and on return find that Wonderhubby has left a message that the car has broken down and he's having a tow. By the time I fetch him from the garage, have tea, tidy up and annotate the slides with extra notes it's 10.30pm before I am ready to read it out to an audience of one. Wonderhubby tells me it runs at 13.5 minutes and it sound like I'm reading it out - which I am. He tells me it will be fine if I take 3 slides out and learn it off by heart. It's now 11pm and I want to cry. Never mind, the interview isn't until 12.30 the next day so I manage to make some hasty adjustments in and amongst taking Teen2 to the station and an assortment of domestic chores.
My main concern on reaching the Institute of Digital Innovation, Teesside University is finding a parking space and I get out the car, check I'm not overhanging someone's drive and get back in and edge it as far forward as I dare, get out again to check and back in to the car to throw on a smattering of make-up in the rear view mirror. Then I run along the road to arrive at the IDI and find that the interview is running late (should I read my notes through again?) and to be honest when I eventually arrive in the room it's all a blur. In addition to the 2 people from IDI on the panel that I've already met, there's 3 men all something very established in the digital media business, one of whom looks very severe.
I struggle to find where to put the memory stick in the hard drive - any moment now they're going to discover that I'm the most digitally inept person on the planet. It doesn't help when I hold the mouse up and keep pressing it, thinking that it's the remote to change the slides. 'Use the cursor keys' , so I search for them and someone has to come up and show me where they are on the keyboard. I haven't learnt my notes off by heart and even if I had, I wouldn't have the confidence to go 'off-cuff'. I expect a grilling 'Dragon's Den' style on completing the presentation but instead some genuinely interested questions and suggestions; they seem to like it. I thank them for their time and that it was nice to meet them (because actually it was) but I'm not really sure how it's gone.
At 4pm a message comes through on my i-phone, a 6 month Digital Fellowship with bursary! Elation! A wonderful validation of my business idea. Perhaps my talk was OK after all - I 'm digital savvy! A potential media mogul! At this moment in time, there isn't anything I can't do.
