I recently attended NDC Sydney, paid for by work. The following week I was asked to do a brief talk at the tech department meeting about my experience at the conference. My bosses probably expected me to talk about certain technologies and tools, and to come up a few ideas on how we can incorporate these things in our projects.
I decided to talk about these topics instead:
Some feedback I received after my ten minute presentation:
“Great job!”
“Your talk was amazing!”
“I was falling asleep then you woke me up with your talk”
“You’re a really good speaker”
“It was very entertaining”
People seemed to have enjoyed it, and I appreciate that, but honestly, I felt like I took the easy way out by avoiding techical stuff in my presentation.
Officially, I picked those topics because I felt that almost every person in the audience could relate to it, which is true… but not the whole truth. More importantly, I also wasn’t confident presenting technical subjects in front of my peers. How could I be? I was in a room full of people who loves to code and learn about shiny new things, whereas I often feel like I’m not “passionate” enough about tech.
It’s kind of ironic that I did a talk on the imposter syndrome BECAUSE of the imposter syndrome. I know that one day I’ll have the confidence and knowledge to do presentations on technical subjects. The imposter within me will probably still be around too, and that’s fine. It just means that I’ve got more to learn.