My first presentation...

Ever since I started StageRebels, I am forced to think back to the days of my first presentation ever and boy, what a trip that was. I learned so much from not just standing on stage, but also from the weeks leading up to that moment and the feedback I received afterwards. The trip itself was a huge rollercoaster, but the reward... It was worth every second of it...

Back in 2017 I was working for the Amsterdam Internet Exchange, a small organisation with around 40 people working there at the time. I just made a promotion to teamleader of the Engineering team when one day our CTO steps into my office and asks me what my presentation will be about... There is this yearly event called More-IP, where a large number of people from the industry come together and on the second day there is what is called the "Technical Track", where the technical team presents on what they have been doing.

When the CTO came in with the question, I honestly though he was being funny and I started laughing. He winked and walked out, which I interpreted as him telling me he was joking, but 2 months later he asked me again as he needed to provide the agenda to the organisation... This is when I realised he was for real.. He wanted me to take the stage for the very first time and I only had around 1 month left to prepare myself, while running a massive project with my team, leaving nearly no time for anything else.

I am not one to run away from something new, in fact, I am one of those people that welcomes any challenge they can get with arms wide open, but in this case it was different. I felt scared and nervous just thinking about talking in front of all those people. So scared that I actually felt sick from time to time, which I never experienced before. I realised quickly, I need to figure this one out and with the limited time left to do it, I started at the place where all knowledge is obtained... Google.

Many hours went into reading books ad websites, and youtube became my new homepage, while I was trying to figure out how to create a presentation. My first results started with creating a powerpoint presentation, but soon I found out that there were whole studies done on how to speak as well. Not just the words you use but also body language and you name it. 100's of tips and tricks on what not to do and just as I started to understand, I found out about storytelling.

While learning all this new information, I noticed that I actually became even more nervous about all those things that could go wrong on stage, so I decided to just write my story, create a powerpoint and sent it to coworkers for review, as they all presented many times before. This worked out great. It took my mind off the nerves for a while and I actually found that creating a story and a powerpoint presentation was not that hard to do at all. Sure, it was messy, but it was my first time and I didn't do half bad.

At some point I found my story and powerpoint to be near complete and sent it over for review. I quickly got comments about changing these little things for the better and I was grateful for all the help. Since the majority liked my stuff, I felt some confidence pumping up and I went back to researching the do's and don'ts on stage. One of the tips that I found online was about making sure you know your story. Practice it, so you can't forget it anymore... Practice, Practice, Practice... That will take away your nerves, or at least a large part of it...

So I did...

I knew every single word from the top of my head and even the slides that went with the words. I memorised those hard to pronounce words and practiced those even more, so I could get them out of my mouth. I even decided to go by train to the event, so I can practice some more and during the train ride home after the first day of the event, basically the evening before I needed to go on stage, I deleted my whole story...

No, this was not a mistake... I did it intentionally... While being in the train, I was reading the story I was going to tell over and over again and I kept getting stuck on the same things. No mater how hard I tried, the words just didn't come out. They simply felt wrong and therefor, as the train pulled into my final station, I erased every single word of my story.

I learned the hard way that you should always stick to your own story and use the words you are using in daily live as well. You are the one on stage, the host of the event asked you to be there and the audience is there to listen to you. Better bring your own story and not a mix of words from different people. The story I deleted was not my story anymore, it were a bunch of words from my coworkers, mixed together into something that could sound perfectly fine. Just not if it comes out of my mouth. The grammar was to perfect and I am simply not. I am that guy that makes wordplays, stumbles over words and makes silly and funny grammer mistakes. Perfection is not something I do...

When I arrived home from the train station it was around 8pm in the evening. I still needed to eat, bring the kids to bed, take a shower and remember that the alarm would go off again at 6am to return to the venue. Basically, there wasn't much time left before going to bed and without a story, I was pretty sure there would not be much of sleeping anyway due to the stress. Given my powerpoint was already delivered to the venue and changes were impossible, I did have some guideline on what I needed to say. I also still had my post-its that I used to create my original high-level storyline and so I went to write the down the things I wanted to say. Not the full story yet, just the buzz-words to help me remember my train of thoughts after which I decided to go to sleep.

Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night. While having my morning coffee I was still half sleeping and decided to quickly get on my bike and into the train. During the train ride I practiced my list of buzz words in combination with the slides, over and over again until I arrived in Amsterdam. At the venue, just before going on stage, I did one more round of practicing after which I got so nervous, I couldn't hold the papers normally anymore. My legs started to wiggle, my hands started to shake and I noticed my thoughts going all over the place.

At some point, the presenter before me went on stage and about half way into his presentation, I realized that I would be up soon. All the nerves I was feeling before went into overdrive and I started to feel my legs get all woozy. My biggest fear at this moment had nothing to do with forgetting my lines anymore, instead, I was afraid I would never make it up the stage as I would go face first on the floor if my legs wouldn't work. I decided to stand-up well in advance and quickly the blood started flowing again, just in time as there were the magic words.. "I will call Tim on the stand..."

I didn't think nerves could get any worse, but hearing those words made them go into overdrive and this was noticeable throughout the presentation!

Looking back at the video below, I can feel the nerves run through my body again. Struggling to find the words, not being able to stand still, looking at the screen constantly, a serious load of uhms and ahhs and my voice... You can hear the fear in my voice...

But there are also a few things I am proud of. Even though it was my first presentation ever, the slides were clean! Not to much text, single subjects per slides and a lot of visuals. The story I brought was an actual story with beginning and end and I used my own words! Not the words from my coworkers, but the words I use in daily life!

After I stepped off stage I received a large amount of positive feedback, but I also noticed I couldn't remember anything anymore of what happened on stage. What did I say? How did I hold my hands and those kind of things... They were all gone... I really needed to wait for the video below to become available.

All in all, there were a lot of things that needed improvement but the most important item of all was there.. It was me on that stage. My words, my story, my slides and from this point onwards, I promised myself to be a bit better everytime!

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