Here’s my video diary from my recent trip to Paris. I was invited to speak at the Ile-de-France Chapter on social media for project managers, but I also took the chance to visit Paris with some friends. You’ll see in the video that my pronunciations of quennelles** and cannelles* are identical. My French teacher would be horrified. Below is a transcript of the video and notes on the French words.
I’m in Paris for a presentation for the Ile-de-France PMI Chapter. This is the first time I have done a presentation in a foreign country. Also, the majority of the presentations won’t be in my native language. It will be a challenge for me. At the moment, I’m at l’Esplanade de la Defense. I’m about to meet up with some friends for lunch.
I’m walking to find the venue for the presentation tonight. I don’t know where it is, but I am currently walking by the Centre Pompidou. There are renovations going on which make it noisy. But the parvis is crowded. There aren’t as many street entertainers here as there used to be. But it’s Tuesday, I think.
We are here! Espace Saint Martin is where I will be giving a presentation tonight. Now I need to go back. Get ready, and I’ll be back around 6 o’clock.
My hotel is located on the other side of Centre Pompidou. It is much more impressive at this angle and it is huge. The area where I will be speaking tonight is located diagonally on the opposite side of the square with Pompidou Center in.
I spent the afternoon going through slides. I realized that although there isn’t a lot of technical terminology, there are some phrases that could be made easier for foreign language audiences to understand. So I’ve been going through my slides and trying to find phrases that I could simplify to make it easier for foreign language audiences to understand. I’ve also added an extra slide to help them understand the concept.
I’ve also written the portion of my presentation that I’m doing at Espace Saint Martin in French. I had it checked by a native French speaker so it should be fine. Now I need to gather my pieces and go to Espace Saint Martin to present the presentation.
This is an impressive space. This is the upstairs, and you will see all the strange statues. The auditorium is on the other side. We are actually in a small downstairs room and I am accompanied by a project management company that does SharePoint. They will be doing a demo tonight, so that should be interesting.
This was the room where I spoke this evening. They had somewhere between 80 and 100 people show up. People started arriving even after the session had begun. There were not many chairs so people had to squeeze in the back. This was great. It was amazing to see how many people showed up.
I spoke with the President of the Chapter. He said that it is a busy Chapter with many events planned. I was glad to have the chance to meet some of them and to talk to them.
It’s now about quarter to ten, and I’m back from the presentation at the Ile-de-France Chapter. It went really well. There were many great questions, people were friendly, all Chapter members and organizers were helpful and served cannelles* with drinks after my speech. He was from a company, and they talked about SharePoint implementations and how it can help manage projects.
Overall, it was a great evening. I spoke to one of the people there.