-
Overcoming my fear of public speaking
I'm flying high above southern France, the sun fresh in the sky and clouds hugging close to the ground below.
This afternoon I am speaking about CSS Systems to a waiting audience in Basel, Switzerland.
Two weeks ago I gave my first proper talk at BarCamp London 5. To experienced speakers this will sound strange but I was petrified to stand up and express opinions in front of possibly the friendliest audience there is, a group of about 25 supportive and interested friends.
I have possibly the most common phobia out there: the fear of public speaking. I had accepted it and come to terms with being the one who helps on the sidelines.
At BarCamps I would organise lightning talks, show and tells and IE6 debugging games, which was a great way of conforming to the required participatory nature of BarCamp without risking what I feared would be professional suicide.
Some of you will know that my partner Simon Willison is a very experienced and excitable speaker, so I am quite accustomed to the speaker circuit without being directly part of it and in fact most of my friends are experienced speakers as well.
It's not that I don't have anything to say, nor do I mind talking one to one or occasionally socially in small groups. I am excitable and opinionated. I am even OK on stage introducing speakers for things like Oxford Geek Nights. It's all the expectant faces staring back at you and the fear that I'm going to waste several minutes to an hour of their lives. I didn't have the conviction of my opinions: what if I was wrong?
I used to clam up. Once I was even told by someone that they were worried I had stopped breathing.
In January of this year I started working for Clearleft. There is a strong culture of community involvement, writing and speaking at conferences. Writing articles and community involvement were fine for me, but naturally I felt the implicit pressure to start actually speaking and not just organising games and lightning talks.
We had a speaking coach run a day's training for us which did really help but without having that put in to practice the fear was still there.
At BarCamp London — despite pressing a button on the remote that turned off the projector — everything went well and after I posted the slides, I was taken aback by the positive response to the content.
I firmly believe that if you are afraid of something, that's more reason to do it. What good is going through life only doing things you find easy? It's the only way you can really learn about yourself. Test your limits and don't give up.
The reaction to the content spurred me on to agree to this conference in Switzerland but the desire to face the fear and overcome it was the overpowering factor. It doesn't mean I'm not scared, but I can only do my best.
So go, do something that you are afraid of and you will be surprised at yourself.
Update: The talk in Switzerland went well. I was initially very scared, but got in to the swing of things and had some good feedback at the end. It was definitely worth doing.
-
dConstruct and my sisters graduation, a busy week!
The banners are all printed and packed away, the badges, stickers and cards are sorted into little bowls, programs have been stickered and stuffed into little plastic wallets.
The atmosphere office-wide has been buzzing with industrious preparation (in addition to the studious client work) for the past few weeks now. Sophie is definitely the star of the conference however, the amount of herself she has given to the organisation of dConstruct is almost super human and I am sure its going to be a great conference because of it.
The speakers have already begun to arrive and the first workshops start fresh and early at 10am tommorow morning downstairs in the Digital Lounge. I will be on the door for registration and helping out with the 'Managing Community, by Design' workshop run by Lane Becker, Thor Muller and Leslie Chicoine which I am quite excited about.
Late wednesday night I will be packing Simon off to Django Con and then dashing off up to London to my sister Louise's graduation from Fine Art at Goldsmiths. I am immensely proud of her and looking forward to seeing her all gowned up and I fully intend to fuss over her as only a big sister can. I will then be dashing back to continue helping set up the dome for the main dConstruct event. The pre-party stats at 8pm in Po Na Na on East Street and I hope to see you there!
Friday will be an extraviganza of 'Designing the Social Web' with an exciting lineup of speakers and talks. We were lucky enough to get a preview of Jeremy's yesterday and I think you are in for a treat.
Once the learning is over the after-party in 'Above Audio' can begin, no better way to end a very busy week and an excuse to socialise with the tons of interesting people who are descending on Brighton this week
-
SXSW Videos - Capturing the scenes of South By!
SXSW Videos - Capturing the scenes of South By! — Unofficial collection of SXSW videos.
-
Site Launch: Django People
One of the many sites Simon and I are collaborating on at the moment came into fruition in the (very) early hours of this morning.
Djangopeople.net aims to unite the Django community in their common allegiance of development environment. Until now the Django community's spirit had been a victim of the documentation's success, with such conclusive coverage people commonly don't feel the need to venture into IRC channels, or mailing lists to ask for help.
A very simple site, Djangopeople is (currently) just a mechanism to say who you are, where you live, what your skills are and provide links to sites you have contributed to that run on Django. Naturally there are plans to develop this further.
So far uptake has been great, since we launched—About 15 hours ago—a total of 633 people have signed up and added their profiles. Which is really exciting!
If you develop in Django head on over to Djangopeople.net and add your profile. We welcome feedback and bug reports.
-
Snipplr redesign
It is always the way, ideas are 10 a penny. If you don't actually get round to implementing it someone else eventually will. Quite often though it's the case that I don't mind not having implemented it, just so long as it exists.
A fine example of this is Snipplr. Ever since I first got into web development I intended to build something like this, I am sure I am not alone here, it is something that was desperately needed. Snipplr do a good job and I am very glad something like this exists now.
A very handy little app, Snipplr lets you store code snippets against a particular language for easy future access. Naturally—like all good web apps—you can tag and comment too.
To the best of my knowledge the Ruby on Rails based 'BigBold' (now Dzone) by Peter Cooper, was the first big snippet app. Released shortly after was Snipplr and then CAB, the engine behind Django Snippets.
The winning feature as far as I am concerned is Snipplr's simplicity, BigBold I think tried to do too much in requiring code type syntax to mark up the snippet, lending itself more toward mini tutorials than reusable code. Snipplr's recent redesign is nice too, very striking and low on imagery it uses nice and bold typography to bring out the code samples and tags.
Snipplr also has a textmate bundle which is awesome. You can configure key combinations to post or insert snippets directly to what you are working on. There is also an API, browser bookmarklets, Gedit plugin and a Wordpress plugin.
There are a few things that are still a bit shaky, such as pagination or private snippets amongst groups (it only lets you do public or totally private snippets). But all in all an attractive solution if you want to share or store bits of code.
-
The Great British Booze-up at Shakespeare's Pub (Monday, March 10, 2008)
The Great British Booze-up at Shakespeare's Pub (Monday, March 10, 2008) — The official SXSW party for Brits in Texas. Organised and funded by Clearleft, Carsonified and Boagworld this looks to be a lot of fun! see you there :).
-
'Networking'
I entirely agree with this chap when he talks about being in someone's company because you want to be, not for what advantages it can get you in life.
I have been in situations at conferences where you think you are having a nice chat with someone and then they get starstruck and leave suddenly - even mid-sentence on occasion - to talk to the object of their admiration.
John Scalzi's article makes for a far more articulate rant:
The most successful networkers don’t 'network.' It’s an odious term. The most successful networkers ignore the grasping patheticness of the term altogether. Rather, they talk. They laugh. They share the moment, and enjoy other people’s company; are generous with other people and help them celebrate their successes, rather than asking to scrape up against that success so some of it might crumble off on them. It works the same online and off.
-
Settling into Brighton
It has been roughly a month now since Simon and I have moved to Brighton. Our lovely if tiny flat has been suitably warmed and we have happily settled into Brighton life now I think. I have recently been contracting 3 days a week for Clearleft and as well as working on some personal projects and tech reviewing a book I am currently looking for freelance projects in the local area.
There have been a healthy amount of events since we moved, both social and tech-related, Brighton is definitely a nucleus of exciting things to do and it is great fun. It has been a bit of a conference season too, what with the awesome dConstruct directly after we moved, the great (if slightly hungover) BarCamp Brighton, followed shortly after by an equally great FOWA Expo. It has been fun meeting new people and catching up with ones I know, both those who I am in regular contact with and people who I haven't seen for years!
-
@media 2007 Hot Topics Panel
@media 2007 Hot Topics Panel — Jeremy presents the transcript of this years hot topics panel.
-
Main Page - MakeMeASpeaker
Main Page - MakeMeASpeaker — Great idea, I hope this turns people who have something awesome to say into people with the confidence and presentation skills to say it with pride.
-
Adactio: Journal - The diversity division
Adactio: Journal - The diversity division — nice analogy, great point ... 'A guy walks into a shop and asks for some product or other. The shopkeeper says, “We don’t stock that. There’s no demand for it.” The shopkeeper then adds, “It’s funny: you’re the tenth person to ask for that t.
-
Eric's Archived Thoughts: Diverse It Gets
Eric's Archived Thoughts: Diverse It Gets — I believe that diversity in conferences will improve as our industry does (a number of people have already said how). I get hyped quite easily so I am staying out of this whole argument.
-
Information Design Conference, 29 & 30 March 2007
Information Design Conference, 29 & 30 March 2007 — Perhaps a bit expensive but might be fun if you have money to burn and are excited about Information Architecture.
-
Oxford Geeks hit the media!
It looks like the last of the Oxford Geek Nights has caused quite a stir in the media recently. I'm not entirely sure how the Oxford Mail initially came across the story but it got half a page of coverage in last Wednesday's edition (see online version or archived online version)
As a result of this I was contacted by BBC Radio Oxford, BBC South Today and Radio Oxford (Formerly Passion FM) who are all interested in covering the next one. Radio Oxford also interviewed me for about 10 minutes, snippets of which were used in the news every half hour for the next morning.
Get Flash to see this player.
(Download News snippet)
Adam from the breakfast show heard the interview I gave to the news team and wanted to interview me live on his breakfast show, although this meant me waking up at 8am on my holiday, I agreed.
Get Flash to see this player.
(Download Breakfast snippet)
With all this news coverage and potential publicity for the next event, I decided to start planning for the next one. We are looking at Mid April, likely the 11th of April for the next event.
Consider this a call for participants, I need 2 keynotes of 15 minutes and 8 Demos or lightning talks of 5 minutes each. Let me know if you are interested - nat@natbat.net
-
An excitable BarCamp
This week has just been all go! Fresh from a successful project launch I dived straight into BarCamp. BT were generous in their provision of the great venue we used for the weekend. There were over 160 people attending, roughly 70 of whom stayed overnight we think!
Co-organising BarCamp with Ian and Jason was a lot of fun, sure I was running around and I didn't get chance to have as many in depth conversations with people as I would like, but it was definitely an energetic and exciting weekend. I would do it again in a shot.
All the talks I went to were superb, I just wish I could have seen more - I was particularly upset at missing the improvisation sessions which I hear were fantastic! My personal favourite of the whole weekend was my sister Leu Downe who is an artist and not (yet) a web developer, but she had a great time and gave a presentation on how to release your inner owl to save it from being forced to produce ice cream!
Other talks (sorry if I miss any out) that I enjoyed and got something out from include:
- Design consequences by Lisa Reichelt - Fascinating technique to get everyone from the team involved in the behavioural design (the fun part) of an interface. 5-8 people sit together with lots of post-it notes paper and pens, everyone designs separately the same wireframe of the interface. After this you swap with the person next to you, annotate and improve on their design for another 5 minutes and then present what you now have to the group. The meaning behind this process is to get everyone involved and thinking about ideas of the design, development and consequences of the design.
- Project Management for busy geeks by Meri Williams - Good presentation aimed at busy geeks with little time for project management. The main point I got out of this was that planning isn't always about producing artifacts you will use later on, it is more useful as a process just to get members of the team thinking about the project.
- User centric design by Andy Budd - Proposing the idea that usability is not everything, ("The ipod would have failed usability tests") there needs to be more fun in design. Reasons behind the popularity of sites like myspace revolve around the interface being 'game' like, users are rewarded for exploring yet at the same time should be prevented from doing any serious damage to anything in the process of their exploration.
- Code reviews by Mark 'Norm' Francis - On the code review process at Yahoo! Code reviews in my opinion are important to the maintainability of a project but also as a quality assurance method within the team. Norm elaborated on the best way to perform regular code reviews with as little wasted time as possible. The thing in particular I got out of this talk is that every time an agreement is reached in the code review sessions, for example doctypes or the best way to do 'x' it is documented in a table with a reference to resolve future disputes. The code reviews Norm talked about had 3-6 people analysing the code in a quiet place away from IM, email and phones. After this they get together for 30 mins with the author (who is encouraged to say as little as possible) and discuss their findings and a moderator takes notes and keeps things on course. A list of recommendations is produced, these are addressed and then there is a followup meeting. I think this is a good process and it would be really interesting to see exactly how effective it is.
Strangely enough - I didn't realise this till writing it up just now - all the talks above that I really enjoyed are about processes!
As anyone who was there knows though, BarCamp isn't just about the talks - its about the energy created by the people that attend (and of course the now obligatory late night werewolf sessions!). The atmosphere last weekend was electric, the feedback received has been really positive which is fantastic.
Thanks once more to the generous sponsors of the event BT, BBC Backstage, O'Reilly, and Torchbox. All in all it was a very fun weekend! I met lots of really interesting people who I hope to see again, thanks to everyone who came and made it so enjoyable.
-
First Oxford Geek Night a success!
Thanks to everyone who came last night. I really hope everyone had a fantastic evening, we had some interesting talks and some cool demos. It was pretty tricky to judge numbers from where I was sat, but I have been told that we had over 100 people at one point, which is great!
The running order of the night went as follows ...
Keynotes
- Simon Willison - An introduction to OpenID
- Olly Willans - Demonstration of Photoshop CS3
Microslot set one
- Tom Dyson - Peastat
- Jonathan Leighton - Ruby on Rails Migrations
- Tim Almond - Wordpress as a CMS
- Gemma Hentsch - Concatenating forms, a Django extension
- Garrett Coakley - Drupal 5
- JP Stacey - Building an ultra thin CMS with XSL and Atom
Microslot set two
- Nick Birch - New Popular Edition Maps
- Artem Pavlenko - Mapnik, a map rendering engine
- Matthew Westcott - London Underground Tube map demonstration
- Bryan Gullan - Avoiding accessibility pitfalls
- James Wheare - Live bus times, a Google maps mashup
The photos from last night are online and can be found on flickr, the slides, links and hopefully audio of the talks will be available soon.
A big thank you to the fantastic speakers yesterday, to Torchbox for their generous sponsorship and to all the wonderful people who helped me out on the night.
We're planning to organise a second Oxford Geek Night in a few months time.
-
Line-up for Oxford Geek Night
The debut event for Oxfordshire based geeks draws ever closer, this coming Wednesday at the Jericho Tavern! As you may have already read, the doors to the upstairs bar will open at 8pm and the talks will then start at about 8:30.
We now have a fantastic line-up for the evening, starting with two 15 minute keynotes on very different subjects. Simon Willison gives an introduction to OpenID followed by Olly Willans demonstrating the latest version of Photoshop - Photoshop CS3.
The set of 5 minute microslots cover a wide range of exciting topics. The first 6 cover content management, frameworks and statistics, the second set explores maps, mashups, JavaScript and accessibility.
Microslot set one
- Tom Dyson - Peastat
- Jonathan Leighton - Ruby On Rails Migrations
- Tim Almond - Wordpress as a CMS
- Gemma Hentsch - Concatenating forms, a Django extension
- Garrett Coakley - Drupal 5
- JP Stacey - Building an ultra thin CMS with XSL and Atom
Microslot set two
- Nick Birch - New Popular Edition Maps
- Artem Pavlenko - Map rendering engine
- Natalie Downe - The importance of permalinks in unobtrusive JavaScript
- Bryan Gullan - Avoiding accessibility pitfalls
- James Wheare - Oxford bus times, a Google maps mashup
There will also be plenty of time in between the talks for socialising and drinking at the upstairs bar.
Look forward to seeing you on Wednesday!
-
Oxford Geek Nights
A note to anyone in or around the Oxford area on Wednesday the 7th February, or even to those willing to travel .... The first Oxford Geek Night will be held at 8pm upstairs in Oxfordshire's fine venue of "The Jericho Tavern".
For more information of the event and directions, please see the official site
Oxford Geek Nights offer a chance for web developers and designers in the local area to get together, share their skills and talk about new ideas, techniques and technologies.
The format of the night will include two or three keynote talks of 15 minutes each, followed after a healthy period of socialising with a set of open microslot sessions.
I personally believe that Oxford has a thriving, talented and enthusiastic geek community. This event is a chance for everyone to finally meet up and share their skills and ideas.
-
@media 2007 | The Cutting Edge Conference for Professional Web Designers
@media 2007 | The Cutting Edge Conference for Professional Web Designers — this years @Media site, looking very sexy.
-
Snap and Twitter on the wind
I am undecided whether I like these Snap popups just yet, they seem a cute way of showing a preview, an indicator of what you get once a link is clicked on, they might well be a passing fad but I decided to try them on for size, just hover over a link on this page like this one to see the effect.
I stumbled across Snap the other day from a link on Twitter which in itself has fast become the internet's new fad. It is an addiction based on a simple premise of asking "what are you doing?" time ordered independent thought patterns.
When I was at university I used to have over a hundred people on msn, some of whom I had technically lost contact with. I still cared about them and wondered what they were up to but I never got around to messaging them. So the way I kept up to date with their life was through their msn names. I found nearly all of my contacts would change their names regularly.
At first I thought Twitter was like this, independent murmurings completely unconnected. It was only natural of course though that communication would happen.
Its been really fun and completely different to any other interaction online, its not a forum or a chat, occasionally its independent eg 'Natalie is cooking dinner', often its in response to things other people have said. There's drama and excitement but all the posts still have to generally stand alone, people on your contact list might not have everyone else listed. The ambiguity and half conversations make for part of the fun.
I thoroughly recommend trying it soon, before the wind changes and it goes out of fashion.
-
d.Construct 2005 | Web 2.0 Conference, 11th Nov, Brighton
d.Construct 2005 | Web 2.0 Conference, 11th Nov, Brighton — .
21 items tagged "conference"
Look at "conference" on del.icio.us, Flickr or Technorati