Have you ever committed to someone and then something else comes along and you’d like to do both?

This is exactly what happened to me. We’d planned to broadcast a short 20 minute Q&A about alternatives to Windows 10 which was going to be shown on the 18th May at 1pm and could not be moved. The only problem was I had to jump on a plane to Dublin at 3pm.

Flying from Birmingham, I’d never flown from there before, I decided to give myself an extra hour to find a suitable location with a strong mobile signal. Having arrived in time I surveyed the area and found the best place was close to the airport, unfortunately, all the roads in the area had double red lines everywhere. I managed to find a little spot but it was incredibly close to the perimeter fence surrounding the airfield.

 

I then fired up the laptop connected it to my smartphone mobile hotspot only to find my laptop was telling me that I only had 40 minutes battery left and the time was currently 12.30. My other co-presenters were going to be joining me at 12.45 so I had no other choice but to execute my plan. I set up the camera and the others came online to join me at the allotted time. I mentioned that my laptop might die midway through our presentation but had a backup plan. Then I looked up to find a police vehicle drawing up with the sole intention of moving me on. At this point, we had 5 minutes before our live broadcast and I had to find another place to park. I now thought I was in my own version of Police Camera Action.

Chatting to the others whilst driving and having no other choice I find a suitable location and at 13:00:50 we were speaking to the nation. At 13:07 I dropped offline as my laptop had died so I quickly implemented my emergency plan and rejoined the broadcast on my mobile phone. This was fine but I could not see myself so balanced to the phone on the car dashboard only to find all the audience could see was my nose, forehead and the car sunroof once I watched the recording of our event.

So I feel I need to offer the 150 viewers that have since watched the video some kind of explanation and give you all a little bit of background. That said I’m still blown away by what you can do with smartphones these days and we managed to speak about several alternatives to Windows 10. Albeit half with windows and the second half, there was no window in sight apart from the sunroof in my car…Doh!

https://goo.gl/photos/zpGU2Hfsn38jKAmXA

Special Thanks to Donna Beckett and Alan Stainer. 🙂

Picture and credit to – https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b5/PCAtitle.jpg