Lifting Up Voices
Photo by C Diroll
I never imagined myself becoming a conference speaker. It feels like it happened in the blink of an eye.
Many years ago, my mentor asked me to host one user group meeting in his absence, which eventually led to me becoming a group organizer. Not long after, I was invited to a brainstorming meeting to plan a local agile conference. My mentor was surprised at how vocal I was in sharing my thoughts with the group and commented on it. I remember distinctly sitting by the back wall of the conference room because the seats at the table were taken.
The thought of silencing myself as I sat on the outskirts of the group was remarkably fleeting: my thoughts needed to be shared with the group. I had a good pulse on the agile community and sensed what topics would be of interest to help us plan the event. By the end of the meeting, I was slated to co-present Eliminating Barriers: No More Us vs. Them. My first conference talk!
Since then, I’ve presented at many, many events. Co-presenting has been an amazing way for me to learn from someone else—I get to hear their viewpoint and experiences, experience how they like to work, and see how they interact with an audience. As I became more experienced as a speaker, co-presenting also became my primary method for helping other people gain speaking experience. Friends have teased me for being a promiscuous co-presenter (particularly when I have multiple co-presenters with me at an event). But when someone close to me says presenting is a bucket list item for them or that they’ve struggled to get accepted at a conference, I look for opportunities to “tag in” and make it happen. Getting started can be really hard, and I love to make that process easier for people.
So when Jenny Tarwater asked me last year if I wanted to be a mentor for the Launching New Voices program as part of Women in Agile, I immediately said yes. Enabling people to share their wisdom and experiences with the greater community is important to me. This would be a great opportunity for me to practice growing a new speaker without being their co-presenter!
As part of the LNV program, I was assigned to mentor someone who would be delivering a lightning talk for the Business Agility conference. It was an incredible experience for me and for her from our first conversation. Carmen already had the story to tell mapped out from a blog post she’d written—it just needed distillation to fit into a 7-minute talk and for her to gain confidence telling it aloud. You can find out more about the process from Carmen’s recap blog post and WiA podcast episode. Carmen is an incredible agile coach and person, and I’m excited she’s now an international speaker.
Advice for Aspiring Speakers is now being published as a multi-part blog series on the Women in Agile website (see part 1, part 2, and part 3—more to come). If you’ve ever thought about speaking at an event someday, give it a read. Someday could be closer than you think.
