My good friend Jesse
asked me to consider doing an Ignite talk at the Velocity conference. I hemmed and hawed for a while, but after being assured that I could do a talk on a non-technical subject, I agreed.
I submitted the talk "Adopting SF Prankster Culture – One geek’s 10-year journey to find an outlet for his social creativity." I have posted the slides, but unfortunately those slides don’t convey a lot of information without my running commentary. I would have posted a video, but there was some problem with the video recording at the event, so I don’t think I’ll have access .
It was a really fun time. I did get a bit nervous ahead of time, but I just had to remind myself that I had just jumped out of a plane two days earlier. With that perspective, I was able to take the stage pretty confidently.
I did have a bit of a false start though, because the slides that were on the monitors right when I started were for another presenter. I did my best to bullshit my way through a slide or two until the organizers figured out the glitch. I think this actually softened up the audience with a bit of humor, which got them ready for my talk which I gave one deck later.
Doing the talk had some unexpected benefits too… For the whole next day that I was at the Velocity conference sessions, people would come up to me in the hallways and congratulate me for my presentation. I felt kinda like a geek rock star!
So if you have a chance, I would totally recommend doing an Ignite talk. I’m glad I got to ‘cut my teeth’ doing a talk on a social concept as practice in case I end up making a presentation on any of my other more technical projects.
