This past weekend, I had the opportunity to present a seminar at the NY Wine & Food Expo in Tarrytown, NY.

While previous classes had been relatively small (5-15), I was advised to expect between 20-100 people. I was not adverse to teaching to a large crowd, but the wide variance in attendance made it difficult to plan for handouts, without needlessly killing trees and/or breaking the bank. We compromised with black & white, fewer slides and ~60 copies. In the end, we had between 45-50 people attend.

I presented our From Vine to Wine class, which usually runs 1.5-2.0 hours, but was required to edit it back to 45 minutes. We kept our usual tasting of five wines, but I omitted some of the more technical aspects of viticulture and vinification and spoke extremely quickly. I also had to alter my pedagogical style from a more interactive one to a lecture.

Despite the whirlwind of information thrown at them, the participants seemed to enjoy the class and a few people came up to me afterwards to pay me compliments. Accordingly, I am now looking forward to future opportunities in which I can present to large groups.