My First Public Speaking Experience

I gave a speech at .NET Liverpool on Tuesday, October 29, 2024, at 6:30 PM GMT. The event was open to everyone and could be accessed via the Meetup Platform.

Having been in Liverpool for a few months without finding any worthwhile events, I decided to check meetups again. A month prior to my speaking, I attended Demystifying gRPC - with John Staveley.

At the end of that event, Joshua Duxbury announced they were looking for speakers. Since public speaking has always intrigued me, I seized the opportunity like and FBI agent and forced myself to present next month.

The Decision

It was an easy one, even though confidence might have not been there - you gotta step out from the confort zone.

For some reason, I've alwasy wanted to try public speaking - maybe because of YouTube influencers back in 2016 that I looked at, such as Graham Stephan or Kevin Paffrath aka Meet Kevin and similar, where they themselfs were just starting out.

But beyond that, public speaking comes with benefits. Not to mention the skill you'll aquire each time youperform, such as pernamently increased confidence, better communication skill - and the potential for new busienss opportunities.

It's essentially marketing in its purest form - standing in front of the audience, delivering value, making an impression.

Fun fact, this is exactly why there are lots of free events funded by recruiteres or product companies. They aren't just handing out free pizza for goodwill - its a calculated exchange. Their brand goes up on the screen and engraved on YouTube, their speakers take the stage, and in return, they get exposure, credibility, potentially new sales and new applicants for jobs they have.

My story will be written as it was, with a small redaction here and there for personal reasons.

The Experience

Had a month to prepare. Took 2-3days instead.

Which basically meant 10hours of sleep across 3days.

Some say that's bad. I say it's a fucking necessary. You make the mostof whatever mess you're in.

Shit happens.

That's no reason to throw your feet up on the desk, if you own one.

Started Sunday night. Deadline? Tuesday 5pm.

No clue how to even make a presentation. Last time I touched PowerPoint was back in 2010.

I load up Google Slides, try it out, and think to myself...

This is garbage.

Ugly. Outdated. Feels like Windows XP.

Tried every other software I could find. All sucked.

What now? I've got nothing!

No slides. No plan. And barerly any time left.

And to make things worse?

• Starving
• Sleep Deprived
• Mentally Exhausted

Then I recieve a text from the organizer... "Hey, you ready yet?"

To make matters worse, the same day, after the presentation I had to check out from my place, rush to the airport, and catch a 2AM flight to Poland.

And of course, Airport didn't go well. My luggage was too THICK.

Didn’t fit in the Manchester Ryanair Airport’s self-check baggage machine.

Got a different QR code. Told them, "Oh, it’s not scanning." They send me to the counter.

I put my luggage on the scale… 5kg overweight.

Fucking 5kg!

No big deal. Been here before.

Solution? Tesco bags. Pulled my stuff out, shoved it into shopping bags, and strolled through security and the gates like I just did some “airport shopping.”

Always works. (Ryanair, by the way. Pro tip: Do it at your own risk—preferably with a bag from an airport store so they recognize it.)

Why do I always put myself in these situations?

No good. No good. 🙅‍♂️

Solution to Presentation

I started thinking of excuses, meanwhile googling Steve Jobs presentations, trying to figure out what Brad Frost uses for his slides, and I got no where.

Even though Brad has a very nice post about public speaking, it wasn't quite what I needed.

Eventually I found Canva.

Had no idea how to use Canva, had to learn it, give it a try and it seemed good enough.

There was one problem, I had no time to do it how I wanted.

And it had to be pretty.

I barerly knew how to use Canva, so I got a template of the marketplace, modified it a bit, added some personal touches, some halloween icons I found on Google and Whala!

I've basically figured out a framework(for all your techies out there: framework is a real or conceptual structure intended to serve as a support or guide) to finish my presentation.

Now the fun part begins, or so I though.

I started creating slides, one by one.

Turns out, creating one slide, takes a lot of time.

Creating a presentation, is harder than writing a blog - now you have to create visuals that match what you want to say, and more importantly you have to set a flow before hand. You can't just wind it up at the stage because it'll be out of sync when you speak - which happen at least once to me.

One thing I knew for sure, is that today is going to be a long night, a loooong night! Or two, maybe three :/

I was ready to give an excuse on why I can't come - but that doesn't align with my values.

The Mindset Shift

Look, when I need to get my head straight, I think of Roman Emperors. Spartan warriors. Solidiers from the world wars.

Think these guys sat around making excuses? Hell no.

Can you imagine a Roman Emperor says "Oh, I don't feel ready today"? Not a fucking chance.

And while I'm no Emperor, technically, there was an Emperor Aurelian back in 270AD... who got murdered in 275AD.

If I'm carring that name, I better honor it.

So here I am, seconds to calling the organizers, ready to feed them some excuses.

Then I stop, and I tell myself.

“You’re going. Prepared or not. If it sucks, that’s on you. Worst case? You wing it. But you’re going.”

Had to remind myself of my own damn values, in thrid person - yes.

You signed up for this, you wanted this, you're going.

Hunger? Sleep deprived? Exausted? Irrelevant. Roman solidiers

You think Roman solidiers marching 26miles a day in full armor got to say, "Oh, my legs hurt"?

Or World War solidiers sitting in mud-filled trenches for weeks seeing their buddies getting blown up got to say "I didn't sleep well the past week".

No. They did what they had to do.

The next three days of my life became a one long, never ending slidehow factory.

My existence for the two, to three days looked like this: 1AM – Creating slides. 6AM – Creating slides. 2PM – Nap. Four hours max. 6PM – Creating slides. 9PM – Walk to "unwind" (spoiler: it did NOT unwind me). 11PM – Back to slides.

Next day switch the times to be random.

Had a presentation happening tomorrow...

And that "unwind" part? Yeah, that just whiped me out even more.

Sitting on my computer, doing a slide after slide, losing my congitive sensation.

At this point I was a sitting zombie.

And yet, somehow, I manage to do it.

44 slides done.

The Eavening Talk

Woke up at 5:20PM. Yeah, went to sleep at 4PM afternoon on my talk day - after cracking up 44 slides, scrubbing down like I just walked out of a war zone.

Went outside - my brain and legs are fried.

Let's go to the bus stop, save some energy for the talk - I though.

Except that I had no fucking cash. No card. No clue how the hell I’m getting there and giving a speech while concious, instead of walking a few miles.

And just when I think the universe is about to bend me over... BOOM. The bus payment machine’s down.

The driver? Letting everyone in. Free of charge.

What are the fucking odds?!

Even the bus was going fucking sideways, at least the Mr CEO BUS misery worked out in my favour.

The Venue

Arrived to the city center, and maybe its my zombie brain, but I had no idea where the venue was.

I ask one person - "Go right",

Another? "Go left"

Asked on the same damn street.

At this point, I might as well just walk fucking straight.

@#$%&!

Finally arrived to the venue, and the first thing I do? Jump the goddamn pizza. Like a starving animal that never seen food before.

Four slices? Nah, two pizza sandwitch. Stacked them up in disquise. Tactical.

Did anyone see? Maybe.

Anyone cared? Doubt it.

Had to fuel up - got a talk to give.

But I stop myself. Can't go overboard.

Last thing I need is hiccups or burbing.

Or God forbid - vomiting mid-sentence on the crowd.

Don't want that to happen. Nono.

Meanwhile, Joshua gets my Canva deck up on the Mac.

Locked in. Ready to roll.

The Actuall Speaking

First presentation? Missed it.

Too busy demolishing pizza and spending the entire talk in the toilet—fixing my hair with water. Not that anybody cares.

I do.

Come back fresh. Sit at the front. Watch the second speaker. Waiting for my time to come.

Thinking to myself... am I getting anxious?

Doesn’t matter. It’s happening. Any moment now.

The talk ends. Now it’s me.

Fucking Roman Emperor going on the stage.

First thought?

Damn. There’s no microphone.

Nobody’s gonna hear me. Gotta speak up. Project my voice.

But just as I’m about to start, Joshua shows up with a mic.

Great! Joshua planning is exceptional.

He sets it up. It works.

Alright. We’re rolling.

Except… there’s a problem.

The Canva deck is loaded, but there’s this annoying bar around it - from Canva.

I try to move the mouse, hoping it’ll trigger sleep mode and disappear. No luck.

Joshua comes over, saying something’s not working.

I try to tell him, “No, it’s fine, I just wanna hide this bar”, but I can’t even get the words out to him.

Forget it.

The bar eventually disappeared.

Presentation starts. I start talking.

And… every. other. word. is. a. stutter.

Can’t pronounce a single English word properly.

I sound like some low-energy zombie trying to give a speech.

No good.

But then, the audence starts laughing.

Must've done someting right.

Mid-presentatoin, a guy talks to me.

Totally ignored him.

Not on purpose - just didn’t think he’d understand a word I was saying.

Finish the speech. Make a joke about "BOB."

Gotta leave that good ending impression.

A guy facepalms.

People laugh.

Pull up my last slide—QR code, my link, my contact info...

Nobody cares.

Oh well.

Meeting ends. Joshua comes up, shakes my hand.

And that’s it.

I go sit down.

Grab some more pizza.

The last slices of pizza.

I'm hungrier now than when I came.

Oh well, got a plane to catch.

Despite the odds, presentatoin done, just like I wanted.

The fucking Roman Emperor I am.

Reflection

With everything getting wrong, somehow, somehow, I've managed to do a presentation I liked.

Pretty slides. A comprehensive enough story. And just ebough enough practice to keep the flow straight.

The best way to improve oneself it to self-reflect and feedback yourself.

You can't improve without looking past on the speaking and how things could have been done.

There are a few things that stoodout.

• Sleeping; No doubt, if I slept properly, the speaking would be better, less stuttering more energy
• Stuttering; Even if rested, practicing speaking and pronouncaination is going to be good overall.
• Flow: The way I gave the speaking, and the flow, is okay, however I could have done a better job if Ihad more time to run the presentation in my head a few more times, and tweak it just alittle more times.
• Audience Engagement: There was a person talking to me,
• Confidence: I didn't quite execute on every thing, so
• Speaking

After speaking.

This also made me realise that creating such prsentations is similar to YouTube.

Not only can I use this to make a presentation for a meetup, I can also use the same framework to create YouTube videos which I always wanted.

Getting better at both - perhaps that's why doing YouTube helps with public speaking. There's a lot of structuring hppening.

I've re-written this article four times now. The tone set for the article was inspired by the middle of it, with the buss, then I re-wrote everything yet again, and given the day and the time, with a lot of details I wont share for person reasons, I think it actually fits pretty well - in case you're wondering.

OH yeah, started writing at around 11am, its getting to 1am, that's 14hours of writing. Full day. Re-written the entire about 4times. Takes a lot of effort into witing artciles and or creating content like such.

So that aslso says my normal speaking is a lot worse, given that I have time to think of the words Im going to use, and.

My canva slide, in case you wanted to have a look: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGU3By1kMk/_OkPKcN3GsxEghIKFRMeWw/edit?utm_content=DAGU3By1kMk&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

The end & Social Anxiety

If you're looking to give a public speaking, I'd adive to sign up first, give yourself that deadline, and get in the right mindset.

You're most likely going to suck at first, just look at my, stuttering every other word and barerly able to pronounce a word, while you, most likely, have no issue talking, so that's alrady a huge plus.

If you sturggle with social anxiety, or stuttering or similar, you might need to build yourself in other ways before you can actually walk on the stage. I used to be scared to even go to the toilet or walk with my hands out, and over the years with a positive mindset did I gain more confidence, to the point where I was able to take a leap and give a public speaking talk.

No worthy thing comes easy. And you might not be ready for it, yet.

In terms of other people, nobody cares about you, and find out what your goal is - see, I want to improve, and I'm not going to do so by sitting in my bedroom all day. At the end of the day, I will live my life regardless if I do something or not - and nobody will look at it.

So if you want to give a public speaking, because you got something to offer, even if it was talked before, not everyone listens to everything you do, for some it might be the first time, give ita shot anyway.

If you're in the UK, and looking to give your first public speaking, .NET Liverpool is great to start with.

No pressue, everything will be explained. Microphone given if needed. So it happen I've done some 20minutes, but 5minutes is enough.

If you don't want to be recorded, they will honor your request and won't publish it, so no pressure. I recommend you contact them if you're in the UK, and even if that means you'll have to take a 3hour train from Leeds or Nottingham, it'll still be worth it at the end of the day, if that's what you want to do it.

I've messged with a guy who also stutters, and he found my public speaking inspiring.

Now I'm actually more inspired to do more public speaking just because I'm so bad - if I can do it, you bet, most people can do it better than currently i can. And that' sjus tbeing a realist, the how to make a goodpresentatoin, which I think mine is fine, there's jsut a few keys to follow, like keeping the slides short, little text, say no more than 20words digest big slides into smaller than onebig slide and make a few jokeshere and there to keep the audeince hooked, a strong start and a strong finish is the most important - at least that's my experience from the first talk.

My motivation comes from withing myself, being limited by others in any way or form is the biggest fear of mine. I set myself to do public speaing, as much as I dislike the idea of it, I do enjoy acually giving it, and I do hope its going to positivelly impact myself - so there's no time to think aout negative things. Especially when a lot of people, will cheer you up anyway, and there's always those who will hate on you, but you don't want to get defeated by them, do you.

And if you want to just come over, you can always get a ticket via the Meetup Site.

Hope you've enjoyed the blog! Happy days!

Spent some 16hours on this article, re-writing it 4-5times. Will attach some pictures/screenshots if I can find any related to this.

Here - my suitcase that barerly whistanded 2miles of being trashed - Uber? Cabs? Pfffff. Sparta walked with heavy armor.