 Good, hello and welcome and a very good morning, I guess, because we are on a hacker conference, so it's still morning. Yeah, we're here for the talk, Social Anxiety, and then, yeah, public speaking with Social Anxiety. Yeah, the talk will be in English, obviously, because I'm speaking English, and we still seem to have some technical difficulties with, like, outside air, but without further ado, this very curious unicorn will tell you something about public speaking, with Social Anxiety having, like, eight talks under her hood, and, yeah, with Social Anxiety. So without further ado, a warm welcome for this very curious unicorn. Yes, thank you very much, and thank you all for joining me today to listen to me bubble on about Social Anxiety. First of all, let's start with some content warnings. This talk will contain discussion of mental health topics, such as bullying, as well as mention of bullying, anxiety and depression. All of that, generally, I am in a good place now, so that's a happy end, I guess. So then, with that out of the way, let's just go over some meta stuff. Who am I? Yeah, I'm some nerd in the mid-20s who works in tech and just enjoys info-dumping about stuff. I'm not what you would call mentally healthy. That's just an excerpt of my diagnoses. But despite, or maybe because of that, I would actually call myself pretty successful in what I do and in my life. I keep holding talks that people seem to enjoy watching. I have partners and friends who I just love very deeply, dearly, and with work stuff, like because anxiety also definitely impacts that. When I did an internship, I was able to complete it in 2.5 instead of three years. I was able to become a senior developer at age 23 and basically a product owner at age 24. So why this talk? Why did I want to do this? First of all, obviously inspire more people like me to hold talks, give tips to newcomers so they might have an easier time getting into it. Give reasons why someone might want to do this, even though it's not necessarily easy for them. Hold the talk that would have helped me basically if I had seen it 10 years ago, because I would have loved to get started on this earlier. And overall, just have fun as well. So first of all, why am I a master? I actually wasn't always anxious. So as a kid, I would always dance and sing in public. And at some point, I switched schools. And I was taught that was a bad idea the very hard way. Like very shitty comments and stuff. So yeah, I learned to hide myself. But the instinct of wanting to put myself out there never fully went away. But I just basically pushed that away, that part of me. And I also started being extremely self-deprecating to pre-emptured bullies might say, because if I say it first, it might hurt less. Yeah, stuff I did. But I did manage to become slightly less master. Well, my slight is also master. But that is intentional, if you've seen my other talks, you know why. So first of all, I was very privileged to be able to do those things. I understand what everyone is. But yeah, I actually was able to do this. I was able to have therapy for a while. These days, I'm on anti-depressants and ADHD meds, which are also extremely helpful. Definitely being the person I am. So coming out as trans and just only spending time with people who treat me as who I am is especially important. I got out of some shitty situations. Yeah, and another thing is just lots and lots of introspection, which is an ongoing process, obviously. Another thing, I am very much still doing is learning to ask for help. And yeah, I did that recently. And yeah, it was good. I also became really good at the thing that pays my bills, which is the tech stuff, which has definitely helped me become more stable and believe more in myself. And also a healthy dose of playful bolsterners because just with self-deprecation, if you pretend that you're the best person out there, you start to believe a bit of it. So I never thought I was the worst person out there, even though I was saying that. I also don't believe I'm the best person out there. But yeah, playful bolsterners, really good thing to start doing at some point. And just every time you get the urge to be self-deprecating, just do the exact opposite. So why do I keep doing this? And maybe, why should you? First of all, last week I was doing really badly, and I just asked on Feddy if I have had a positive impact on other people just to kind of be reminded that I am good for others. And like multiple people came out to say, your talks have really helped me, which was amazing. And yeah, that's the best reason to do this. I also just like teaching people about topics that I'm passionate about, like web accessibility, which was my first large talk, and also info-dumping, which is a separate thing, because I may not be passionate about everything that I know too much about. And I can still have fun talking about things that don't actually matter all that much. I also really like contributing to these awesome events. I'm generally not able to do too many of the angel or troll shifts, which I always feel a bit bad about. But I think if I contribute to the programming by holding talks, I'm at least doing something to make these events as great as they are. Another thing for me practicing my English skills, up until very recently, I was writing English every day, but I was not speaking it. I recently got the very best reason one can have to speak English regularly. But up until that, I did not speak English recently too often. And yeah, that was a nice chance for me. But also holding talks in one's native language is better if one does not feel confident enough in their English skills. And yeah. Another thing, I'm not actually introverted, or not too introverted, but I absolutely suck at starting conversations. So if I'm holding a talk, I can always say, like, yeah, you can come to me and talk about this more if you want to. And I give people a reason to start a conversation with me, which is really, really helpful. Another thing learning about interesting topics, like maybe there's the thing that I want to learn about that I don't know how to motivate myself. If I've got a talk for a conference about that thing, I will have a deadline. And I will be able to get myself to learn. And teaching other people is also one of the best ways to actually learn something, at least for me it is. And one thing I noticed is also speaking uninterrupted and only having to answer questions afterwards is really great if you're one of those people who often get talked over, especially in work meetings and stuff. This will not happen here. And that can really help you boost your confidence. So enough about the me and Metastuff and stuff, like, let's get into some tips and tricks that you might be able to follow to you, hold talks, and feel better about yourself while doing so. First of all, don't forget your Meta at home. I did that last year and ended up having to take twice my usual amount of antidepressants, which was not great. Another thing which you may or may not know about is PowerPoint karaoke. It's a thing at many events. There you get a slide deck which you have not seen before and you have to basically make up stuff as you go along. And yeah, you don't want to be educational with that. You just want to be funny and entertain people. And yeah, it allows you to practice in a very, very safe environment. The worst thing that can happen is not being funny. So yeah, it also is kind of like a bit of a practice for when you're blank during a presentation because blanking during PowerPoint karaoke is kind of the point. So yeah, and it's extremely fun. Also just watching it is fun. Like, I certainly didn't get a chance to take part at this event, but I was watching it. And it was really great. One thing where PowerPoint karaoke is great, I would not actually recommend you take part in lightning talks if they are planned like they were at this event. If you can register beforehand with your talk and get a slot, that's good. But the way it was done here was that people were just giving a sign and saying, yeah, I want to hold this talk. And then they let the people decide by clapping who would get a chance to do their talk, which, yeah, I don't really get why that was a thing because A, if we hadn't wasted all that time on clapping, we would have gotten to our talks and also it's like really unnecessarily cruel. If your talk gets rejected by some committee or by a group of people in private who read the description and stuff and for whatever reason they reject it, that's one thing. But if you get publicly humiliated in a way that is recorded, yeah, I don't push that on anyone. So yeah, if there are lightning talks which you can register beforehand, do that. That was my first conference talk, actually at GPN-19 and it was really fun. But if it's spontaneous like it was here, don't bother. Yeah, another thing you might be able to see, I almost exclusively wear black. That has a reason, actually nobody really cares how much you're sweating. But people being able to see how much you are sweating will make you more anxious. At least it will make me more anxious and that clothing hides that. Hides that. And also remember, like the people listening here are just like you. This is not some school or work presentation which will be graded or negatively impact your career or anything. So yeah, we are like-minded people generally here and that is very good. And if you think you're not good enough to speak at an event, you are definitely good enough to submit a talk. Your talk will only be accepted if they think it's interesting and if you were able to come up with an interesting proposition, you are definitely good enough. The inverse is not true. If you get rejected that does not mean you're not good enough. There are many reasons why a talk might get rejected. Which takes me directly to my next thing. Trying to take rejections personally. This might seem impossible. Like most of us probably understand rejection, sensitive dysphoria and stuff. But conferences just get so many submissions they can't accept every good one. And try to speak at small events first. Large events naturally get way more proposals and they might also prefer to have people speaking who have more experience at this. Like my first submission for a non-lightening talk was also at the last in-person congress. And yeah, it got rejected. It felt bad at the time but I understand and it's okay. One thing that's also really great if it's a thing in your city is regular talk nights at Hexpaces. So some do that like once a month or a couple of weeks where people just get time to hold a talk in front of their regular Hexpaces audience. And that's a small group and they will generally accept everything because they don't have too many submissions. It's a really good place to get your first speaking experience. One thing that I generally try to do is putting jokes on slides. This slide deck is actually pretty short on jokes but usually I try to do that. With jokes, a bit of self-deprecation is okay but never overdo it with that. Like overdoing it with self-deprecation will lead to you believing the shit you're saying. And also it can get very annoying. I don't want people I like to be talked about badly and that includes them talking badly about themselves. I don't like that and other people don't like that either. One thing I'm definitely struggling with even right now you're probably noticing is the speed in which you're talking. Speak about half as fast as you think is good. You will probably still be too fast. One thing to slow you down is taking a breath between slides. Don't rush through them. You could also take a sip from a drink. Every couple of slides. This allows the content to sink in and it slows down your talking. Drinking not a thing if you decide to wear a mask during your talk. But if you don't, that is very helpful. And also don't apologize if you mess up. Unless you mess up and up hurting someone. If you had someone, obviously apologize. But otherwise people don't care if your talk was a couple of minutes short or if you mispronounce a word or something like that or if you forgot a point. They don't really care and you only push their attention to that if you apologize. So try to avoid that. So now I've gone through some things that I find especially important for people who suffer from anxiety. But also there are tricks for people who don't or for just about anyone. Just some things that I picked up over the years of preparing talks and watching many different talks. Like font size, never below 20 points. You should generally use a sans serif font. That's because people with dyslexia will have issues reading your text with serif. Don't put pure black text on a pure white background. Like you can do it, obviously. But just putting a little gradient line like I did here at the bottom of my slides just makes it seem more rounded. Also you can, if you don't put these lines at the very bottom like I did here you can put them a bit above and you can also put one on top. Which kind of boxes your presentation in and makes it less likely that you're able to that you will overfill your slides. That's also very helpful. Unless you go over those lines which would end up looking awful. But yeah, it's a neat little thing you can do. Also one thing I don't always remember to do but I definitely should check the contrast between font color and background. There's the well-known WCAG AA or AAA standard. The AAA standard for colors doesn't give you many choices and the WA is not strict enough basically and it allows for some very difficult to read things. There's the newer thing which is called accessible or advanced. I don't know which is the canonical one. Perceptual color algorithm which like, yeah, it does not allow some things that WCAG AA does but it does allow some things that AAA does not. And yeah, it's a good algorithm and you can just find online tools to check your contrast. Also use a 16 by nine aspect ratio. We're not at some school with outdated projectors usually and it just looks better in 16 by nine. You can also get along with, get away with longer lines without your slides seeming crowded on 16 by nine. Generally, if you're speaking at a CCC event they tend to prefer darker color scheme because most of the designs are dark and it can get blinding to switch between stuff. I did not know this even though it seemed obvious until I had someone kind of rounded me for that but like no hard feelings, I totally understand it. I just thought, yeah, I should put it in here. But Stygites also like dark color schemes is one thing. There's often Stygites for conferences and pre-made themes which you can use but they are only a recommendation. They are often released too late for my experience because I like to kind of start my talks early even though I finished them late. And so yeah, they're only a recommendation. You don't have to use them if you don't like them or if they're not ready yet. Also don't worry about perfection. Like I also majorly messed up one talk I held which is not recorded, not uploaded yet. So I can't actually go back and check how much I messed it up. But yeah, nobody said anything bad. I still had interesting conversations with people about the topics I was speaking about. Yeah, it's no real, no big issue. Keeping slides light-ish on content is good. There are some people who tell you don't put anything on your slides. Like only put some fancy image which is kind of related. I wouldn't do that. It makes it very difficult for people to follow you if the space is out for a bit because then they're not able to pick back up their concentration. And you should just generally always have something to add and don't say the exact words on your slides. Speaker notes are also great. Every major software has them. You should avoid writing down full sentences in there, especially if you're the kind of person who will then just read those sentences out because it will not fear fluid in the moment. Many people like to have cards with their talking points on them which can give you something to hold on to, which is great because if you're like me and you tend to fidget a bit with your hands that can not look great, but a presenter remote also does this. It also gives you something to hold on to and you cannot mess up the order of your presenter notes. So you could mess up the order of your cards or lose a card or something like that which would be very stressful in that situation. So I don't actually recommend cards but maybe it's something for some people. Also 20-minute presentation, 10 minutes for questions is easier to fill than you think. And even if you do end up coming up a bit short, nobody will actually complain. This is a bit the way I do it, but I think it's a very good way to prepare slides. It's just throw stuff on there without any rhyme or reason and then clean it up later because that way you are way less likely to actually forget something you were meaning to say. And yeah, it's just helpful and also if you run out of time, you still have slides. If you bike shed too much and you're doing too much styling too early, you might end up not having anything to present. In this, if you just throw your stuff on there first, you will have something to present even if it doesn't look awesome. And I think that's better than not having anything at all. Also get comfortable with presenting software. Microsoft PowerPoint is the market leader but I do not recommend it. It's not very good in my opinion. Google Slides is pretty good and free. I tend to be able to remember how to actually do things with it. So I don't have to learn it every time I do a new presentation which is the case with PowerPoint or LibreOffice. Apple Keynote is really, really good. Like it's my favorite one out there but only if you have a Mac to present. The web version which is available is very, very limited and it is more limited than you think while you're doing the talk. So videos will play in the edit view but they will not play in the present view. Yeah, that's why I took my iPad to last GP and then presented with that because otherwise my presentations would not have worked at all. But yeah, if you're a Mac user you can actually just use Keynote and yeah, it's a really good tool. Choosing a topic, your topic does not have to be as personal like minus right now. You don't have to share anything about yourself actually to make an interesting talk. Choose something you're passionate about or just choose some random rebuttal you fell into. The latter might actually be more entertaining. It might have making you someone that is forever associated with emoji even if you don't use emoji in your day-to-day conversations. But honestly, that was very much worth it because I met so many great people through talking about emoji and Unicode stuff and I still enjoy doing it to this day and I'm also planning some things regarding that as well. Prepare the slides well in advance. I would generally recommend 45 minutes at least before you hold the presentation. No, I usually try to have my slides in a presentable state the weekend before the conference starts and then I will do some more stuff during the conference and during the train ride but none of that stuff that I do is actually necessary for me to feel like I can hold this talk. So yeah, the last weekend before the event should be when your talk is in a decent state. And yeah, practice your talk well. That's also something which I don't always remember to do but it's really important. You don't want to blank and forgot what we were meaning to say. Like no matter how great your slide deck is if you forget the additional info you wanted to add to that, yeah, it won't work out. One thing I learned last year is to only submit multiple proposals if you're prepared to hold multiple talks. I have three talks at last year's GPN. I did not expect every proposal I sent in to be accepted. I did not expect any of them to be accepted actually but yeah, they accepted all of them which was stressful but also fun. So in the end I don't regret holding any of those talks but if you are going to put in multiple things you might, multiple proposals, be prepared to also hold all of those talks. And there's always going to be another conference where you can submit your ideas so you don't have to push them out all at once. So yeah, that's it. Thank you all for listening. If you want my help you can reach me at this email address on Teddy. I may not answer in time, feel free to ping me especially emails I sometimes lose my, yeah, I sometimes don't know things that I wanted to replay too, I forget. If you're to ping me there's also many more people who will be happy to help. This time at GPN there was actually a little check mark. I want help preparing my talk in the submission form which is great. So yeah, you will definitely be able to find someone who helps you and I would be happy to be that person. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much for the talk. It was a great talk, at least I didn't notice that it was about social anxiety, it was more about how to do a talk. Great, and it was a really great talk. Any questions from the audience? I mean, okay then, let's start. Okay, the person's giving me over there. So well, first thanks for reminding me of all the things I went through as well. Not as bad as you had, but yes, in a way I overcame my anxiety about talking in front of people. In school, in university, it was nightmare. So the thing I want to share or stress out is first, really be passionate about what you want to tell other people. And second, find a friendly environment where you can. Do your first steps and you know it will be good, even if it's not that good. So in my case, I was happy to have some colleagues and we start doing internal presentations. So it was like 10 people and I knew them, they were friendly and all the time they started discussing right in the middle. So one of the lessons learned for me is you don't need to get through your presentation just the way you wanted to make it happen. It was like, we started discussing things that were prepared, five slides later and just let it run and realized, okay, yeah, we already had that, that's fine. So that really helped me get around it. And the other point I wanted to share is about making jokes. I realized it's really not good to place a joke in the very first sense, it's an ice breaker, especially for myself, getting over the nervous, being nervous and for the people. We just want to have some fun, it's not an exam right here. So that's what I wanted to share, thank you. Then let me quickly run over. Sharing a thing, well thanks a lot for the amazing talk. Sharing a thing about myself, I get into another type of persona when I make microphones before my nose. I don't know why but it changes me. Yeah, me too. Like even when I practiced yesterday, I was talking in a very different accent. So, yeah. The second thing, as Harold on some conferences, I would like to recommend getting in contact with us way early so we can offer either help or discuss things or likes you have, whether you like questions in between or only at the end or no questions at all. The Harold is there to help you. Yes, thank you for that. As a Harold, I mean, that's my first Harolding here, so. But yeah, we are here to help and it's our job to make anything you don't like happen, so. How do you deal with feedback? More specifically, how do you not downplay positive feedback and not catastrophize negative feedback? But I do that. Yeah, that's a very difficult thing to be able to do. Like, you can have 20 people tell you you were amazing and one person tell you your shit and then that one person is the only thing you remember. Generally, I think reaching out to other people, like I did, for example, last week where I was saying, did I ever do anything helpful for your life or something? That was very, very good for that. So yeah, especially asking for positive feedback is very helpful. Okay, then can you hand in the microphone? Do you have any advice on keeping your talk short enough to fit in time? Because especially when I deliver talks at some pop cultural conventions where everyone is free to comment and ask questions during the presentation, I have no idea how to estimate the time it would take and then I end up not finishing, so yeah. Yeah, so I would recommend now taking questions during if you can because that just throws your plans out of the way and you cannot plan your time too well. So for keeping it short, I generally try to have one slide per minute of presentation plus questions. So I generally don't need a minute for one slide. But this is 30 minutes, a 30 minute slot and I had 23 slides this time which kind of works out, at least for the speed in which I'm speaking and for the amount of stuff I put on my slides. Okay, one last comment, if the person, okay. Then looking at the time, we are after the questions. I think the people can reach out to you and maybe reach you at the event still. So yeah, just ask and yeah, a warm applause and thank you.