Starting to speak

And now, for something completely different ((c) Monty Python).

After a few years of visiting conferences, something began to itch. And this itching was enhanced by a few conferences adding newcomer tracks. And then some people started to ask me why i wasn’t speaking or at least trying to put together a session. And more and more my argumentation not to do this started to fail. And so i decided to give it a go. I was too late for Data Grillen 2020 so i decided to hold back to 2021. Safe option, more time to prepare.

But then, new stars of data came by. And i thought about it, but did nothing. Then there was a friday afternoon of digital grillen where a number of people was challenged to go and submit. And i got nervous. But why? Because in fact no-one knew if i wanted to speak or not. So why did i get nervous? I had to think about that one for some time. And then i turned the question around. Because i heard that most speakers get nervous because they care about what they’re about to do. They want to deliver good content and help everyone else.

So i decided to just go for it. I had a story in my mind and if it’s got potential, i can write the core down in minutes. The same way i get to write these blogs. If the core has formed in my mind, the rest will follow as i type. Filling out the sessionize site took a few minutes and then i submitted my first session and asked for feedback if or when i got rejected. All i expected was a rejection and i was hoping for some guidance how do better next time. But i had gone past the first two hurdles in about 48 hours. Wow, it felt intense but good.

And then, on a normal monday i was teaching a class and suddenly got a mail from new stars of data. Thinking it was the explanation i opened the mail, only to find my session got accepted.

accepted!

But ehm… ok wow! That was unexpected. The next mail i got was the one where i got the incredible honour of being mentored by Jess Pomfret. She’s done some awesome sessions on powershell stuff you should really check out. And now she’s mentoring me. Within a week we had an online meeting getting to know each other a bit and trying to establish how to get this to work. We’re just going to see what happens and make the best of it. In any case, mistakes are all mine.

For most of my co-workers it was a surprise i’m doing this but everyone has been really supportive. One of the things that’s always a struggle is powerpoint. What theme to choose etc. But marketing of my company Axians allowed me to use the company lay-out. That saves a lot of work and troubles.

Build the session

Now all i’ve got to do is build the session. I’ve created the storyline and got some great feedback on it. So far so good. Now i’m starting to get the materials together and build the entire session on the foundation. A few people have offered to listen to trial runs of my session as to improve it. There is so much help and support in the SQL community, you will not believe it.

I’ll try and blog about my experiences about the progress of session building, mentoring and rehearsal. Maybe one day some will read this and think, if he can do this, so can i! That will be the ultimate success of both my session and this blog.

Thanks for reading!