Editor’s Diary: Going Live In 3, 2, 1!

In this week’s Editor’s Diary, I’m reflecting on another first: I hosted my very first Teams Live Event on Monday!

It was a whole new experience for me.

The occasion was International Women’s Day on March 8. And the event was part of this year’s Dundee Women’s Festival.

Of course, with the country still in lockdown, the festival programme was entirely virtual.

That turned out to be a good thing. It meant people from all over the world could attend our event if they wanted. And there was no restriction on numbers, either.

On the downside, I had to become familiar with the technology required to make it all happen!

And hope and pray that my internet connection didn’t go down . . .

What could go wrong? Well, quite a lot, actually. Beforehand, my fear was that the event would be cat-bombed by one or more of my furry friends.

That didn’t happen . . . but serious technical hitches in the run-up to going live at 3 pm caused a fair bit of anxiety.

However, I was fortunate to have my fabulous colleague Alice working away behind the scenes, ensuring everything ran smoothly.

It was lovely to spend an hour in the company of historian Charlotte Lauder, discussing the life and career of Jessie M. King.

This remarkable woman was Dundee’s first female professional journalist, and wrote for the “Friend” under the name Janette.

At first it felt a bit odd to be talking to an audience I couldn’t see. But I soon got used to it, and in fact almost forgot they were there!

Charlotte was so interesting I could have chatted to her all day.

There were so many questions to answer that we ran out of time before we’d dealt with them all. Surely a good sign!

And in case you’re wondering, Matilda put in an appearance five minutes after we’d finished. Phew!

If you missed the event, you can watch a recording of it here.

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