24.09 | September '24: Uhh... No changes :(
Holidays are over and big changes happened right after my return! Unfortunately, these changes were at my day job and affected my free time so much, that I pretty much came to a standstill for StageRebels :(
Back in 2014 I joined the organisation where I work for as one of the Engineers. After 2,5 years, early 2017, I became the Teamleader of this team and we did some amazing work! We improved so much during the years that followed and went from the team that was most invisible to the most celebrated on.
After another few years, I got promoted again, and the team took care of themselves.
In recent years, the workload on the team increased due to large migration projects and the work became more sophisticated due to new technology, leading to even an higher workload. Procedures we created in the past became outdated or simply didn't work due to changes elsewhere in the organisation and so on... Clearly, the team needed some guidance again and after returning back to work from holidays, they requested me to temporarily jump in as "Interim Manager of Engineering". Cool title right :)
Anyway, during these last 4 weeks it became clear how much work there was to be done and this pretty much took al my attention away from StageRebels and anything else. It took some time, but at this moment I can honestly say that we have clarity on what needs to happen and what the priorities are, but the last few days in September and definitely a large part of October will take all my time away, hoping that I can focus on StageRebels in the second half of October again.
There is some news for StageRebels though. As part of me stepping back into my old role, I demanded that the StageX workshops continue and because of the number of participants, we had to divide this into 3 sessions, which happened for the first time in September! A great blast we had, a lot of fun, but also straight into the exercises, which scared a few people at first.
During the workshops, the first few questions I ask are what people are nervous about, afraid off or what they would like to learn in these sessions and generally the answers are pretty much inline. Afraid of loosing lines, loosing the audience and those kind of things. As said, the standard answers which personally I feel as well. But during one of these sessions there was one answer I never heard before and never even expected to hear which I would really like to share...
Do you experience any nerves when going on stage? No
Do you have any fears about going on stage? No
So, what do you want to learn?
Well... I honestly don't give a f*ck what people think when I am on stage, so that would be the reason why I don't have nerves or fears, but I feel like I do a lot of things that I should not do on stage... So, I would like to learn about the "Donts".
To give you some background, a few years back this person presented on our yearly event and was constantly running around on stage and looking backwards to point out things on the slides. Given the slides were high up, this person decided to jump, to make the pointing more clear on the higher items. There were things said that you would tell a friend, but generally speaking, you would not say in front of a large audience of C-Level people and customers. Don't get me wrong, we all laughed our asses off and this person did great, but did come across a few items that could be tagged as "DO NOT DO THIS ON STAGE!"
Anyway, this shows that people really are different and in some cases, they are exceptional :)
Header Image
A picture I took while my daughter was having horse riding lessons and I was wondering around a bit... A very lonely riding helmet...