 All right, my name is Nicole Kohler. As mentioned, I'm the content manager for WooCommerce. And I'm here today to talk about how to overcome your fears and start sharing your knowledge with talks at work camps just like this one. So very brief introduction. As mentioned, content manager for WooCommerce. I started using WordPress roughly 9, 10 years ago to blog about Japanese music. And I've been in love with it ever since. And I love Pokemon video games and craft beer. So what I'm going to talk about is how I started speaking to the WordPress community and how you can do that too. One thing I'd like to share with you is that I have anxiety. Even after getting a formal diagnosis, even after starting medication, it is something that still gives me a lot of trouble. It used to be so bad that I couldn't look people in the eye. I couldn't have phone conversations. It was just something that ruled my life. And even though I felt like I had a lot of knowledge that I wanted to share with people, I found it very difficult to do so. But I overcame this. And I overcame depression. I overcame chronic illness. And I found different ways to overcome my fear. And I gave my first talk, actually earlier this year, at WordCamp Lancaster near my hometown in York, Pennsylvania. So it's been less than a year that I've been speaking at WordCamps. And I feel like I've come a really long way. Thank you. Thank you so much. So the reason I'm giving this talk is there are four tips that I feel like I can share with anyone who might be in a similar situation and wants to share their knowledge with the community and start speaking at WordCamps or WordPress meetups and doesn't know how or doesn't know how to overcome their fear. So the first tip, find your thing and own the thing. So by this, I mean everyone's an expert on something, right? Everyone knows something better than anyone else. Your thing might be your business. It might be something involving WordPress. Maybe you know how to start a WordPress site blindfolded, right? So maybe you can teach someone to do that really, really fast. Maybe you're an expert on getting started with WordPress. Or maybe you're an expert on something related to code or intense customization. Maybe you know a lot about using WordPress to accomplish something, like selling online or running a course or memberships. Or maybe it's just a matter of sharing how you did something with WordPress, how you started a store, how your business did something, sharing your learnings. Even though there are a lot of people out there who may, you may think are already speaking and you think are great speakers, they don't have the knowledge and experience that you do. So that's why I say, find the thing and own the thing. Your knowledge and experience is absolutely worth sharing. And just how I'm up here kind of being meta, talking about talking, that's something you can do as well. Talk about speaking at word camps. Talk about something like that. I mean, again, your knowledge and experience is unique to you. And it's something that is absolutely worth sharing. So first tip. Second tip is no, especially when you start speaking, you won't be great and just roll with it. I want to tell you all a story about my very first word camp talk at Word Camp Lancaster in February of this year. So the organizers did an amazing job, but what they didn't expect was that the venue didn't have the audio set up correctly. So I was the very first speaker, 9 AM. I went into my room and there was another speaker in the room next to me. And we started speaking at the same time and the attendees immediately go, we can hear the other speaker. And the audio was bleeding from both rooms into the other. So I'm trying to give my talk in five minutes into it. The organizers start running up and switching my microphone, taking off my shirt, stopping me in my talk, switching the microphone off again, taking it off completely. And I'm like, oh my god. This is my first time. And I tried my best just to keep rolling with it. I mean, they were literally stopping me and the other speaker to do this. And I just tried to roll with it at the end of it. I'm like, oh my god, that was probably a disaster. Everyone probably hates me. But I had people come up to me afterwards and go, I don't know how you got through that. I couldn't have done that. And I was like, maybe I'm not so bad this after all. So that's something you just roll with it. I've had people tell me the more you draw attention to something, the more people are going to notice how nervous you are or stumbling over your words or something like that. So there's another quote I'd like to offer from a cartoon. Sucking at something is the first step to being sort of good at something. It's like, you have to practice before you become an expert, right? If you never practice, you're never going to get good. So just accept, the first few talks you make may not be super fantastic, but once you do those first few talks and once you have those first few stumbles, you're going to get better. I promise that. Third tip is to find your support network. So your support network, these could be people who watch dry runs of your talks. They can give you feedback. They can give you criticism. They can give you ideas. They can show up to watch you. There's several people in here who I know who came to watch me. Thank you so much. And they can share their own tips and experiences from their talks to help you. They may say, hey, when I did a talk, this is something to remember, or hey, I actually did a talk on this topic and here's something you might want to try. The support network that you get does not have to be people who necessarily have WordPress knowledge. My support network consists of my husband and several other people. My husband doesn't currently use WordPress, but he worked in retail for 12 years. And his experience dealing with people helps him look over things at a glance and go, you know, that's a really long slide. They're not going to pay attention to that. Or in my experience dealing with customers, they're going to have a difficult time understanding what you're trying to say here. So anyone you trust can be part of your support network. So my final tip to share is to practice over and over and over. And I do promise that it gets better with practice. And by practice, I don't mean just go stare at yourself in the mirror and recite your talk out loud. That can get boring. But you can practice the same talk at local WordPress meetups, small groups, maybe of coworkers at the same coworking space. You can speak at work. That's actually how I started speaking. I spoke to sales reps at my e-commerce job. If there's a volunteer opportunity for you to speak, you can do that. Or you can if you're comfortable speaking by yourself to yourself in the mirror or to your dog. I actually do that sometimes. My dog's very attentive. And if routine helps, I know with anxiety, I have to do things on a routine sometimes. You can give the same talk in a few smaller spots, maybe a few local meetups before you take it to a big group like this one. So if I was really, really nervous about this talk, I might have taken it to the word camp Harrisburg group and given it there. And that can help you sometimes also get feedback or criticism or things to add or things to improve before you take it to a larger audience. So that can be helpful as well. So before I finish up, I want to offer a few resources. The slides are on my Twitter right now and also on my blog, littleyellowpenguin.com. So you can grab the links from here. You don't have to take a picture of the slide. These are resources that I find viable if you're dealing with anxiety or just fear of public speaking or being uncertain about whether or not you have anything to offer the community. HeroPress is one of my favorite sites because it offers essays about overcoming obstacles in the WordPress community. The essay I wrote was about overcoming anxiety, depression and abuse to start speaking and to start giving back through different ways. But there are a lot of incredible, wonderful, amazing stories on there. I definitely recommend reading this site if you have not already. Another site, or this is actually just one post that I recommend is called an introvert's guide to better presentations. This gives tips not only for speaking as an introvert but for making a really great presentation. Sorry, I highly recommend this. And finally, open sourcing mental illness. This has a lot of resources for those in the tech industry who are struggling with mental health whether you're diagnosed or just think that you perhaps have depression, anxiety or something along those lines. And the last thing I will leave you with, I want you all to remember, whether you are already speaking, considering speaking or too scared to get involved right now. You are awesome. All right, repeat after me. I am awesome. All right. So, thank you all. Thank you all so much for listening. I appreciate any questions or comments you have and again, my slides are on my Twitter. I hope you enjoy state of the word in the after party.