A few days ago one of my many Twitter accounts suddenly came alive. It was quite exciting. My little fun project, BradfordJesusMan.co.uk, had received more submissions and hits than previous weeks and months. @AtkiTeach tweeted the following:
@bettakultcha @racinghippo follow @bdjesusman – cannot believe I only just found this and site! As a Bradfordian, get Mr Jesus or site ppl!
to which @bettakultcha later replied:
@bdjesusman would love you to come and present about bradfordjesusman at #bettakultcha #Bradford
A few things struck me from these and a few other messages that were sent:
- Random people were starting to find my Bradford Jesus Man website which means word is getting around without me having to whore it on The Facebook or The Twitter so much.
- People actually loved the idea of the site.
- I was being complimented on the design and functionality of the site.
- I had no idea what BettaKultcha was…
Now, I was in Chorley at a friends wedding at the time with limited mobile data so couldn’t really look up that much on BettaKultcha at the time but when the data signal came back for a short period I would get PUSH messages through from the awesome TweetBot so I could still see what people were saying. However, as I was Des that night I was able to look at it all with fresh eyes in the morning.
The whole idea of BettaKultcha is, quite simply, to learn about new stuff – to get betta kultcha’d (better cultured, in case you couldn’t work it out!). This is done by way of numerous presenters each doing a five minute presentation with a few simple rules. The most prominent rule, and the one in CAPITAL LETTERS, is that the presentation must not contain pitches. There’s nothing like going to a fun, social event and it turning into a business networking event… The other three rules are what make it fun. Actually, it’s one rule but I think they wanted to expand on it somewhat!
The rules are:
- ABSOLUTELY no sales pitches
- 20 slides must be used
- Each slide must last for 15 seconds exactly
- After 5 minutes, the presentation is over
So I, perhaps stupidly, said I would do a presentation. Now I have a few things to try and work out. Mainly why I agreed to do the talk – I hate public speaking, I’m not a public speaker. One of my lowest marks at uni was when I had to give a five minute talk in front of 6 fellow students. This doesn’t bode well for the same length talk but in front of 100 people…
For a bit of comfort I dug up a bunch of YouTube videos filmed at previous BettaKultcha events. The themes varied wildly; Why Manchester is Better Than Leeds (amusingly this was at a Leeds event!), Magic & Conspiracy Theories, How Star Wars is based on Mills and Boon, How to Get Thrown Out of University, Ghosts, Dementia; each carried out with varying degrees of ability from the presenters. This is a good thing. I will no doubt be considerably lower down on the ‘ability’ scale than some of the presenters but the reviews and blog posts I’ve read confirm that this is probably fine anyway as the people who attend are pretty friendly and unlikely to start heckling. If a presentation is really terrible then they can at least sit safe in the knowledge that it will be over within five minutes. It’s hardly worth getting worked up about!
So, now I need to sort out what I want to talk about. Usually people ask to be a presenter at the events but in my case I was basically nominated, for which I am truly flattered! I think I will talk about a few different aspects of the whole Bradford Jesus Man thing; why I made the website, what the website does and, perhaps most interesting, as much as possible about the legend that is Geoffrey Brindley – the Bradford Jesus Man.
If you want to come along either to see me battling my inner demons or to hear the (no doubt fascinating) other presentations then you need to book yourself a ticket via BettaKultcha’s EventBrite page – tickets cost £5 and the event takes place at the Midland Hotel in Bradford on Thursday 11th August 2011.
nice one 😀