Fearless
What would you do if your fear didn’t stop you?
I watched Edward on stage giving his talk. He looked composed, comfortable, and completely at ease. His slides flicked over every 15 seconds and he easily kept pace with them, smoothly moving from one key point to the next. He finished, the audience applauded and he loped off stage. The MC announced the next speaker — and there I was, mic in hand, on stage in front of 400 people.
If I could have somehow transmitted that moment back in time to show myself 5 or 10 years ago, I would never have believed it. I would have done almost anything to avoid having to stand up and give a presentation, and wriggled out of doing so as often as I could.
But — a succession of people steadily and painstakingly pushing me ever-further outside my comfort zone over many years started to have an effect. I started to notice Good Things happening whenever I did something that I was scared to do. I started to seek out things that scared me. When an opportunity came up to attend a presentation skills training course, I signed up for it, reasoning that if I was going to have to do it, I may as well learn to do it well — even if I hated it. Turns out, it was a great course that taught me to treat myself as the presentation (not the slide pack), and to structure my thoughts in a way that would resonate with an audience.
At the beginning of the year, I made a decision to do more things that scared me, and to do things that scared me more. Whenever I spotted an opportunity to do something new, I took it. It didn’t always work out. I got ghosted a bit and rejected a bit — which was painful at times — but each time I was able to hone in on why, and figure out a bit more about myself and what I really wanted to do.
And then there was the opportunity that got me up on that stage. It took all the spoons I have to walk up those few steps and stand there — but as I started to speak, and my slides started to roll through, I reminded myself to breathe properly, and drop my shoulders, and smile, and trust the prep I had put into my talk. And it was fine. I stumbled slightly a couple of times, I missed a couple of phrases, I said “um” WAY too much — but it was fine.
No-one heckled me. Everyone applauded at the end. People put their hands up when I asked if they were with me at the end. People even came up to me afterwards to talk to me about my topic, and told me they enjoyed it.
It. Was. Fine.
Better than fine. It was great! I had shared some stuff I know, passed on a little bit of knowledge, and got some folks interested in trying something new. And that is an amazing feeling. So much so, that I did it all over again a few weeks later, and I’m now preparing for the next round of CFPs that come up…
So here’s my challenge to you, reading this. If you are someone who belongs to an underrepresented or marginalised group in tech, and you think you might, just might, have something to share with other people but you don’t know how, or are scared they won’t listen — sign up for a workshop on Global Diversity CFP Day, which is on Saturday 18th January 2020. If I can do this, you can too.
If you are already an established speaker, conference organiser, or someone who would like to help get more diverse voices heard in our conferences and speaking events, you can also sign up to organise a workshop near you.
Huge thanks to the organisers of DevOpsDays London 2019 for giving me the chance to kick my impostor syndrome firmly into touch.
