Sunday, April 18, 2010

Speaking at Conferences

I really hate preparing for tech talks, when they are formal and far in advance. I have too much time to think about it, tweak it, etc, and I slowly go crazy.

I have one coming up in 5 weeks, and I'm starting to dread the 'end game' where I wind myself up for it. It's pretty much all I think about, and I have a lot of other stuff to think about.

I'm much better in a spontaneous setting. Multiple people have called me a professor because I can summarize a topic in 10-15 minutes fairly well: just give me a whiteboard and let me go.

CC

3 comments:

M Easter said...

Thankfully, talks are of my own volition. I don't know if I would enjoy them more / less if they were part of my work.

I do know, speaking of grad school, that it was probably wise to get out of academia. Though we all have romantic memories of those days, that is one tough ride.

Binky said...

But what a ride it was...

I'm at the point where I'm trying to work as much of that kind of speaking into my work as I can...

M Easter said...

I gave a dry-run today, and will be doing another next week. We feel much more sanguine about the whole enterprise.

I think part of my general process is getting wound up and vengeful towards my activity. This was true for school, and is true for writing, working out, and talks.

I'm a conflicted soul. What can I say?