Frightening talk

First Lightening (Frightening?!) Talk

“Hello, my name is Georgina and this is my first lightening talk!”

Today I did my first lightening talk. Boy did it feel good!

I decided to give my talk to the friendly audience at Socrates Tenerife. Having learnt my speel on the flight over, and practised it earlier in the day with a fellow craftsman, I was eager to present so managed to grab slot number 2. Introducing the talk I mentioned that this was my first public talk, to which I received a lovely round of applause. This put me a little at ease, and as I took a deep breath, the timer started and I talked about code smells.

Inspired by an article I had read, I decided to use use slides consisting of pictures and no text. This way the audience had to listen to get the context and were not distracted by trying to take in the contents of all the slides. The pictures were non-code related, and as such there were a few giggles each time I clicked to the next slide, as people anticipated what might be up next.

I used quite a lot of jokes and found that the audience were engaged, smiling and laughing along. This, for me, made it all the more enjoyable and engaging.