My First Talk Outside My Company
Background
I had given a few talks at internal events, but I had never spoken at an external one.
I decided to give my first external talk now for four reasons:
- I had always vaguely admired people who speak at external events
- I’m in my late twenties, and I felt a bit of pressure: “If I hit my thirties like this, won’t the bar for a first talk get even higher?”
- People who speak often seem to use their talks as a springboard for growth and career opportunities, and I wanted to build that kind of virtuous cycle myself
- When I only attended events, the connections I made rarely went deep and usually ended there. I thought speaking would get me seen by more people and make deeper connections easier
Reason 2 was the biggest. “It’s now or never…!” I told myself, and made up my mind.
The event
Tamachi.sre#7
https://tamachi-sre.connpass.com/event/408227/
Out of all the LT events out there, I chose this one for four reasons:
- It’s an SRE event, which matches my field
- I had a topic from recent work that I could talk about
- The LTs were short, just 5 minutes
- It was a
1st Anniversary LT Special, so there were more speakers than usual
I went back and forth on it many times, but in the end I hit the apply button on impulse…
Preparation
Once I’d applied, there was no way around preparing.
I steeled myself and prepared in this order:
- Wrote a blog post to dig deeper into the topic
- Made the slides with Marp
- Practiced out loud again and again
When making the slides, I focused on not cramming in too much information.
With only 5 minutes, packing in too much tends to leave the audience thinking “So what was the point…?”, so I kept the message as narrow as I could.
I could also picture myself panicking if I ran short on time, which was another reason to leave some room in the content.
The day
The building was huge and I was nervous walking in, but the venue turned out to be more relaxed and friendly than I expected, which made it easy to talk.
I was very nervous right up until my turn, but I managed to give the talk just as I had practiced.
Reflections
Here’s what went well and what I’d do differently.
What went well
- Keeping the content light
Not cramming in too much and leaving some room was absolutely the right call. It made the message easier to get across, but more than anything, it let me speak calmly without panicking.
What I’d do differently
- Make sure I can set up screen mirroring on my Mac smoothly
- Prepare for likely questions
- Add some humor
These are more nice-to-haves than must-haves, but I think I could have prepared a bit more on them. There were no questions this time, but I’m not sure I could have handled them if there had been.
Going forward
Giving an external talk made me feel like I’ve grown, if only a little.
Taking on a challenge is scary, whether it’s speaking or anything else. It’s scary because you’ve never done it before. But I think that’s exactly where the chances to grow are hiding.
I want to build on this experience and give as many external talks as I can. (Ideally once a month…!)