Stepping out of your comfort zone.

I’ve finally done it! I’ve spoken at a conference, and it’s actually been very liberating.

It all started quite a few months ago. I went to one of the Web Meet Guildford events hosted by my previous employer, Kyan. I was chatting with Laurent Maguire, and he explained that Kyan were thinking about hosting a web conference in Guildford called Web Expo Guildford. He suggested that I should speak. I’d had a couple of pints of Hogs Back Brewery ale by then, and my inner self spoke to me:

“Say yes. Step out of your comfort zone.”

So I agreed, not really realising quite what I’d agreed to. A couple of days later I got an email from Kyan’s Paul Banwell confirming I was on the line-up. When I realised the venue was the posh, newly built G Live centre and not some ropey old pub, my heart started to race. I was on the road to conference speaking, and in my mind there was no turning back.

I decided to talk about something I was very comfortable with: illustration in user interfaces. I’ve spoken in public a few times before, at friends’ weddings, family funerals and so on, but this was something else. I share an office with Jon Hicks, who has quite a bit of speaking experience, so I was glad to have him on hand to offer a few tips. I hate writing scripts and hate reading from them, especially when I’m nervous in public. So I decided to ‘wing it’ and talk off the top of my head, using the slides to give me a structure and some prompts.

I used Keynote for the first time to put my slides together and really enjoyed it. I wrote down notes and ideas as they came to mind in iA Writer, with both apps syncing nicely over iCloud. I hunted around for lost sketches and old visuals and put together a concise personal workflow. I didn’t rehearse the talk and had no idea how long it would be. 15 or 45 minutes was a rough guess.

The day of the conference arrived and I was more excited than nervous. As I started to talk I did feel nervous, but the nerves soon went. About halfway through I realised I was going to over-run, so I sped up a little in the second half, which wasn’t great. Afterwards I felt relieved that it had gone OK, though I could have sounded more assertive and louder, and perhaps focused on a smaller idea. I had lots of really positive comments afterwards, which was really encouraging, and maybe I’ll do it again.

You can view my slides on Speaker Deck, and all the talks were filmed, so they’ll pop up online somewhere soon.

Achievement UNLOCKED!