 to introduce themselves. Beyond, OK. Please introduce yourself. OK. No, guys, yeah, OK. Right, very hard. I have something in my heart. I just learned. So hi, I'm Renu, and I'm a mobile developer at Grav. Maybe I have done a few conferences. That's why maybe I'm eligible to sit here. I have participated in a few conferences like Extended Google Iow and Mobius Russia Conference, many meetups, WW code meetups, and a few other local conferences. That's all. I don't know what else to say about me. Maybe somebody should have interviewed me and say good things about me, right? Hello, OK. Hi. Hi, everyone. I'm Rachel. I was from SB Digital. I was QA. So now I'm moving towards product management. For me, I'm up to now. I'm not 100% sure why I was chosen, but no, no. But the thing is that because I'm a junior dev, so in terms of less than two years ago, I did not know what HML and CSS was, but anyway, I delivered a tech talk at junior dev, and I delivered the same talk internally at SB Digital as well. And actually, before I switched to tech, I was involved in the expo of my company's Toast Master's Club. If you don't know what Toast Master's is, it's a peer-to-peer mentoring for public speaking. So I guess maybe that's why I'm here. So yeah, I hope you guys will enjoy the panel. Hi, my name is Elisha. And actually, before that, when I was younger, I thought Toast Master, do they just talk about talking while eating toast? Why is there toast as in a yam thing, toast, or like the mian bao toast? Anyway, I'm the developer, programs manager for Facebook and for business in Singapore, obviously. And outside of my daytime job, I am the founder of Tech Ladies, which is a community for women to learn how to code. So in terms of my speaking experience, I feel like I want to inspire confidence, but actually, I also like them, so not quite sure why I'm here, but. So my background is I graduated with a psychology degree, and I really start talking about technical stuff when I was trying to inspire and look for a tech co-founder. I never did find a tech co-founder, but through the experience, I begin to talk a lot everywhere. So I guess that's why I'm here. So happy to be here and sharing more about how to talk over toast. My name is King Ming. So as I intro myself in the talk just now, I work at S.P. Digital. So I do IoT stuff in case you don't know it's time for Internet of Things. So I make sure of both hardware and software. Outside of work, I'm an organizer for HAC wear. So it's a hardware mid-up. Then I also just recently got my private pilot license. Yes, I can fly a plane. First of all, now I'm back to work. As for conference speaking experience, I've spoken at three conferences, iOS, Confocon. Then for meetups, I have 20-something recordings of me or engineers.hg. So quite a lot already. So this will be my 30th one, I think. OK, yeah. OK, so clearly my panelists all don't know why they are here. Reflects really well on me. Thanks, thanks. But OK, seriously, everyone is here, as you can see, very different. So I think the point here is to show that there is no one set profile that you have to fit if you want to get into speaking and all that. Any background, and whoever you are, whoever you are, also can one. Everybody also can one. So my first point is introduce themselves, say nice things, or I will say nice things about you, OK, then next. So the focus here, first half of this workshop was more about the CFP writing and stuff. So this section is like your CFP has been accepted. Then now you have to do the work to actually write a talk. So that's quite a big portion, even though the CFP was worked in this, after you get accepted, there is more. But don't let that detail you. So now let's talk about talk preparation. And first question, OK, how do you make your talk interesting? OK, so first, if you notice, two of our panelists are more on the technical side. Well, the two ladies sitting in the center are here to give us more public speaking, how to be a good public speaker presenter tips. So everyone, very relevant. So I would like to hear from everyone, like your own take on what you feel makes your talk interesting. OK, my turn to shine before they talk about the technical stuff. Damn, what am I hearing? OK, so how to make your talk interesting? I think a lot of designing a talk happens before the talk, before the conference, right? Because when you start thinking about, even before you start crafting about your story, you need to know who are the audience. What is the profile? Who are they? What would they find interesting? The thing about public speaking is that it's not just about what you want to say, but it's about what you want to say that's going to be useful for the audience. So be very audience-minded. I'm sure everyone has listened to talks or have been in a school where the teacher just drone on and on and on and really, really boring. That's because I think there's a clear disconnect between the audience and the speaker. So understanding your audience is very important. The next thing about crafting your presentation is to tell a story. So when it comes to storytelling, everything can be a story. I think that gentleman over there was like, he was trying to do like a PS4 emulator, so he started with a story, right? Like I was kind of bored and want to do this, decided to, I found a github, gist or something and I understand nothing, but here I'm going to try something and I'm going to try something bigger. That itself is talk. I don't even realize that that is a story. One of the favorite sort of story up that I like to use is the hero goes on a journey. So like, for example, how many of you watch like a lot of The Rings? Okay, so you know, right? Like these little two happy hobbits, like hobbiting around, and then there is a mission, right? You have to return this ring to like this mountain and then burn it, right? And then they start on a journey and then you know, they have a few troubles and then they add it on there. There's a fuck the big boss and then you end the story. So a lot of times I actually take inspiration from Disney in how they craft their story, because everything can be a story and storytelling is what invests, what draws the audience into your presentation. Because like, even people don't understand that, like I don't understand what is a PS4 emulator, but I was drawn into the story to like figure out, okay, what did you do in the end? Like how did you get over the challenge? And I see in my own life as well, like people have zero interest in entrepreneurship or community. They want to find out how my story went on. That's how I draw them into my story. So keeping it interesting is definitely like, having your audience in mind and tell them a story, that's how you can make your talk interesting. The rest is of course like tell jokes if you can, but don't tell jokes if you cannot. If you tell a joke, it didn't land, move on, don't like cry or something, I don't know how to save you. So that's on the storytelling preparation side. On the very logistical side, one of the tips that I would like to share is to also understand the environment. For example, what are some of the equipment that you will be provided on stage? Like how big is the stage? Are you going to be seated? Are you going to be standing? Is there going to be a podium or are you expected to walk around? Because I guess like for beginners, I would say it's okay for you to hide behind a podium. So if you say that you can read your speaker notes right in front of you, but as you get more experiences, challenge yourself to start walking around the stage. The mic that you have will also make a difference in terms of your performance, like your presentation. If you're going to be like clicked on like that, you have both of your hands free and you can do like a gesture and whatnot. And you probably want to check if you have that if you're going to do coding. But if you're going to have a handheld and you probably be holding a clicker, your gestures is quite lame. So you've got to be, watch out for it. I can tell you one story. I didn't realize but I was doing this. Holy fuck in the photo. And I really want to like, I wouldn't want to die because it's a Facebook event, right? And then I realized I was doing this because I was just like pointing at people. I wasn't really careful about my gesture. Good thing I was holding on the clicker so it could look kind of like that. But otherwise like, oh shit, might be fired. Don't fire me. Yeah, so understanding your environment and these are things that you should talk to the organizer about to find out what are some of the equipment there and also who are the audience will be there. Okay, my 10 minutes is up. Actually I think a lot of the points that Elisha mentioned are also points that I also want to highlight. But yeah, so like what Elisha mentioned, people like to hear a story. Nobody likes to hear a lecture and also it's like, everybody likes to root for the hero most of the time. So if you're able to craft the story around your topic and lead people on the journey with you through the topic to explore the topic, then that is very useful because it makes it engaging. And it's like people can also try to put themselves in the shoes of like someone who is exploring this topic. So a good resource to draw for what to choose is something you experience it yourself. And also try to craft it in a way like, how would you talk about this topic to your past self who did not know anything about this topic beforehand? So it is a good gauge because your previous self knew nothing about it and most likely a lot of the audience doesn't know what you went through exactly. So it's good to start from like a base of like zero and try to explain them so that their level of understanding is raised from absolutely nothing to at least somewhat closer to what your current understanding is now. And it's also, it's easier for the audience to digest as well. And yeah, and people can understand and say, oh, this is why you've done this and I can see why you've gained so much and I've gained a lot as well in the process, which is good. As for preparation, what I like to do is I like to watch a lot of TED talks or TEDx talks because these are speakers who are like subject matter experts, but they're able to talk about the topic in a way that is engaging and interesting for people coming from all sorts of backgrounds and even people who are not there who may not know anything. But yeah, they're able to keep you engaged. And so you just observe how they talk, observe how they use slides or whatever material to present. And one thing about slides, right, try to make sure that if you're allowed to use slides, try to make sure that you use font that is clear and can be seen from right at the back. Try to avoid using comic sense because it's ugly. But also I think try to avoid using animations where possible. So if you have pictures, try to use a still picture. Try not to use a GIF or try not to use videos unless absolutely necessary because number one is there's extra technical aspects to factor in. And number two, maybe it may not be compatible with the projector or something, or like the saw may not work. So there's extra things to factor in. And generally, I think people want to hear you speak. They may not want to go to the conference just to watch a video they can see online. Yeah, so, but also when it comes to practice, try to practice around the mirror and try to practice the point where you don't need to use notes if you can. Because I have watched talks where people have the notes and during the talk, they follow the notes. And if they're not careful, the song can be picked up by the mic and it's very, very distracting. So try to avoid using notes where possible. And it's also a lot more natural for you to speak to someone in a conversation than for you to read from a script to someone else. It's also more natural without notes. So if you can move towards the direction, but of course this takes a lot of practice. So practice as much as you can, but if not try to keep your notes to the minimum. Yeah. Okay, so the two of them have provided a very broad base. Even if you're not doing a technical talk, you can do it. So now specifically, I want to target the two who are... Because when I mentioned making talks interesting, those are really good points. But it's harder to... When you say you don't think about storytelling and a technical topic. So is it... Do yourselves... Do you all apply this storytelling technique to the technical talks that you all give? For some technical talks, it may be difficult to have a story. It could be really like a lecture style. So what I try to do is then, why not I make my topic interesting rather than the format of how I give it? So one way I like to do is that I try to have much two different fields. So for example, I spoke in iOS conference. Then in reality, I don't do iOS in my work. I'm actually a hardware person at work. So I thought why not... Every other talk in iOS conference, of course it's for iOS stuff. Why not I try to mix it with something else? So since I'm in the hardware area, why not I just mix iOS and hardware topic? So the one topic I gave at iOS conference two years ago was SWIFT on Raspberry Pi. So that itself, it mixes two different fields together. So it's a refreshing topic compared to everything else is on SWIFT coding on a phone. So you can actually try this tactic. I think another speaker I know, she merged JavaScript and hardware also. And she gave it at GSK, I think it's not any. So immediately it's a reflection because almost every JavaScript thing is either running on the web or running on the back end, no JS on the back end. So when you have JavaScript and hardware, wow, we're ready. That's an interesting talk already. Yeah, so that's why my ways are doing it. Yeah. For me, actually, I do try this storytelling part quite a lot. And actually, for me, the storytelling part is whenever, like whichever country I go to, I try to learn a few words of their language. Like when I was going to Russia, a few of my colleagues are Russians. Like, so I know that, okay, I'm going to Moscow. So I started being friends with them, like quite before the conference. And then I'm like, okay, how do you say hello? Okay, what's the common phrase in Russian? What's the, what are the funny slangs that you use in Russian? And I try to start my talk with those words. Like it makes me feel connected with the audience and it makes them feel like, okay, yeah. I mean, she knows a bit about this. So I do like to read history and few words of their language. I have done that quite a lot. Like even in India, in different states, like we have dialects, so quite, I mean, and many, many dialects. And I usually forget those words after a while. So like if I go to Russia again, maybe I'll learn those words again. So that technique have been really helpful and it has been really funny because actually, first of all, our accent telling those words, it's really funny. So people immediately start laughing on those words. Apart from that, I guess I use tweets in my slides sometimes because actually as a developer, as an engineer, we tend to follow many famous developers or engineers, right? And whenever they see some sentences from them on the slides in my talk, they feel it's relevant and the credibility gets increased. So I have done this, that taking a snapshot of the Twitter and tweets from famous person, then put it into my slides. So these two techniques I have been doing, and yeah, I do like to crack jokes, but many times they are not funny. Actually, there had been an incident and that day in Moscow, that I was trying to tell a shitty joke and then nobody laughed. And I waited for a few seconds that maybe, maybe someone will laugh and nobody laughed and then I moved on. I was like, okay, yeah. So yeah, these are the things that I try. Yeah, that's all. Since I think the questions, I've just thrown that out the window because clearly this is not the format it's going. So any howly, any howly, hashtag any howly. So what we mentioned just now, like really useful points, especially if you're going international conference, right? But a lot of everybody has touched upon the presentation and the words slides was mentioned. So I'm gonna bring it back to my fairly more technical counterparts again, right? Slides, if it's a technical talk, there's code involved. So what's the approach towards code or demos or that sort of thing, right? Any suggestions on how you, if something that you want to talk about involves code, how would you present it without like showing a screen, a sea of text on your, would you use slides or do you even just live code the thing? Any, what's your thought process on that sort of presentation? I guess it really depends what exactly is the talk about for sure. And then if it does involve live coding, I would recommend that you go for live coding. I know it involves extra practice, like extra quotient because things, Murphy's law like it's applicable, especially when you do the live coding and anything can go wrong. But the impact of live coding, it's really huge. And you don't have to put extra effort to keep audience engaged when you're doing the live coding. I think the engagement, it's spontaneous, it's immediate. Rather than having slides full of text and you trying to explain and then looking at people's expression and you're like, oh, no, nobody's getting what I'm trying to say. So I think live coding that gets immediate attention and kind of you can get the immediate live feedback as well like, okay, yeah, people are getting engaged. Like they're trying to understand what's going on. I have given few talks in which I have included live coding. I did that on extended Google IO and I have received that feedback that in your entire talk, the last 15 minutes were great in which I did the live coding. So I think for me, it really goes a long way if your talk presents live coding, but that comes with its own hard practice. So friends in quiet background music during live coding. Because there's always these moments where like there's just half a minute of something going on and then the music and the feedback in the background to the audience connected. That's a good tip. It really helps. I know King Ming does hardware. Have you hardware demoed on stage before? Yes, I did it before on, for example, iOS conference, right? I did a live demo on tracking your position based on the beacons. So I was really scared, you know, that imagine if I show a live demo and it show a wrong location, then it's like, wow. So one way to mitigate this is you can take a video. You can use it as a really last resort. If your live demo fails, at least you just use your video. Okay, see, this I've done it that way. As for other than hardware stuff, right? For live coding, so one way I do is that you can, that you just comment out the code before that they just uncomment it when you're ready to use it. Then another way is, okay, one presentation I did at GopherCon was actually to start a lot of best commands. So rather than typing out by hand, right, you can actually script it beforehand. I use a tool called demo magic and Google it. So basically we just script up all your commands beforehand. They just press enter, enter, enter. Then it will just key the best commands for you. They just press enter, then execute. Because I have like 20 best commands and I don't want to type it out. I will make mistakes. So it can just like pre-do everything, just enter, enter. Yeah, so there's one way to do it. Yeah, so Renu also mentioned practice, if you're going to do live code, it's extra practice. But in general, right, like everybody, right, before you go on stage, how much time do you take to do all your practice, rehearse, and like what do you actually do for the rehearse, rehearsal slash practice? Do you, I don't know, like you mentioned, talk it out in front of a mirror or like what, what goes, like what each of you, I believe has a different strategy. So it'd be nice to hear like everybody's strategy because it's going to be very different for everybody, right? Yeah. Okay, for me, it's like, okay, for me, before I delivered my very first tech talk, because I was actually really scared because I've never delivered something that's so technical. When at those masters, when we delivered talks, usually something that is very general, a bit more general or something is very personal to you, to the speaker, or it's a very important thing. So it's, so tech talk for me was something very different. So I, what I did was, the topic I did was how to learn something hard in tech, and I incorporated what I learned, when I learned to use the Pache JMeter for a work-related task into my talk. But I, so not just a storytelling element, but also say this is how I applied it to real life thing. So when it came to practice, I would sit down with like my tech lead for the project. I just like run through, like this is how, as though you are presenting it. Another thing also is to try to film yourself delivering the talk into the camera. So not only can you review what you have spoken, but you can also see how long it took for you to deliver the talk and see if it's within a time limit. And just keep on doing that until you feel a lot more confident and you feel like you are within the time limit that the conference organizers have set for you. And this one, it really helps. I used it for those masters also, just to review how I did. So not just your practice, but also on the day itself. If you can get a live, if you can get a recording of your speech, review it after you've done it. So that if you do subsequent iterations of the same talk, or if you're talking about something else, you know like how you did on the actual day itself and then you can improve for future talks as well. Yeah, I think like practice is definitely something you should do. So like for me, when I start thinking about like what I want, what the presentation, what my story is going to be like, I will actually say it out loud so that I can craft the script and the slides accordingly. And then I would recommend this app called Author, O-T-T-E-R. It basically is a voice to text transcript and it's free. So it's super awesome. I try to do that so it's easier to write my script. So as I am writing my script, I would also figure out like, what are some points of the story that I want to change my voice? Either getting super excited or you know start to slow down because I'm talking about some emotional stuff. I would also start thinking about the hand gestures. What at some point when I want to use my hands to sort of further point out the differences and also try to be like mindful about I don't do the nazi salute. So in terms of like practicing, of course you want to film yourself doing it or you can ask a friend to just be there to point out like what are some of the things that you can improve on because a lot of things that you can think about but there's sometimes the things that you do are not conscious. For nervous speakers sometimes they sway a little bit. For first time speakers sometimes they go a bit crazy on their hand gestures. So these are things that you won't think about until you're already there and having someone to rehearse with would help you spot these kind of mistakes or things that you do that's subconscious. Another way is to rehearse in front of our colleagues. For example in SP Digital, we actually have a weekly tech talk session. So anyone of us right, we can choose to give a talk about anything we want and many a time speakers like myself and my colleagues we use that like the rehearsal training ground. So actually you get live feedback from your colleagues and then probably they are less judgmental of you. So it's much better and Michael hopefully will record for us. So we used to have the opportunity to watch ourselves and another good thing is that you get to rehearse with the actual equipment. So for example if you rehearse it by yourself at home you don't usually have a microphone with you but now when you're giving it to your colleagues right you have the benefit of this microphone, the vapor mic, then you can actually get a feel of what it's actually like to give a talk for real. So now you can figure out the logistical problems rather than talking to just a mirror or just your two or three friends, right? So yeah, so I feel that's a very good way to try. And I'll just quickly add on to again like the rehearsing and also rehearsing with equipment. This is why it's important to find out from the organizer what equipment you have. So usually at home if I know I'm gonna have a clicker or a mic I'll be holding something like maybe my phone and I'll hold an actual clicker that I have. Or if you know that you prefer to have a clicker but the venue don't have, I make sure you bring your own. So yeah, because I need to make sure that as I talk my finger I just know when to like twitch a little bit so that I can go to the next slide. So one thing that I usually like to tell myself is assume that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. So always have like a backup of your presentation. Like if you're doing a live coding demo make sure you have like a backup video and just make sure you have a backup of everything and so that in case anything, any technical failure happens on the day itself you don't have the penning to say oh what's the next option? You already have the next option available. So yeah. I think I forgot what I wanted to say. I mean yeah I do kind of mix all these practices. I guess these are the best practices that anybody would kind of take into practicality. Apart from that I guess nowadays conferences have started providing this support for you to help you in guiding that how to be the best presenter that you can be. So they'll kind of schedule few sessions with you so that you can rehearse with them and I think that's a very positive from conferences that is coming right into thing. Apart from that I guess yeah I mean even at Grab like we have these weekly Thursdays we have other meetups and actually I use my presentation to, I mean I kind of give that presentation to my teammates as well. They know whenever Reino is trying to present something that means she's trying to just use us as an audience for our next conference. But it really helps because this is something which is new for them as well. And I get honest feedback for that. I mean they are the most critical person I ever got. So yeah try to rehearse that with your teammates, try to rehearse with your friends because they can be really honest with you. They don't have to fake it for you, right? And that's all. I mean whatever these guys have suggested I guess the mix of all these would work for you. Yeah so you mentioned that now we've talked about talk prep but like on the day especially since you do some fair bit of live coding, right? Is there like a checklist that you make sure that is fulfilled for you to make sure that your talk, your presentation, your live code goes well on the day like before. So like you're there, you already add the conference and like you mentioned that usually there's a session for you. So is there anything that you always keep a mental note off that all these things must be there or I need to check with the organisers that sort of thing? I mean sure and actually that's a very important thing. So whenever I give any talk which includes live coding I make sure that I go to that venue a day before as well so that I get hold of like how does the stage and how does the environment look like. And for sure connect with the organisers in a way that what are the equipments that they will be providing. Make sure you have all the internet connections. Make sure you have the right system. Make sure you have the right devices. I mean the mic what Alisha talked about. So I think you should give a fair rehearse of the live coding the day before you actually wanna do the presentation and you actually wanna do that. And actually what I do as well like for example if my talk is tomorrow and I've watched few talks today as well at the conference and I see what can go wrong in those talks. Right because there are multiple live coding talks over there and then take a clue from there that okay maybe this is something that could have been gone wrong in your talk. And make sure you give that place a visit. Make sure you have a checklist that okay before I step over to the stage this is all what should be ready for me. Yeah so this is like on the non-technical side. I think a lot of right before presentation prep is mental is what you tell yourself like holy fuck they gonna hit me I'm gonna forget what I'm doing I don't know why I'm here why am I good enough. Like this kind of like negative thoughts is something that it's probably very very salient especially when it's the first few talks that you do. So like my pre game prep is when I just started public speaking is that I would definitely put on makeup or fine I'll really really dress up so that at least I feel like confident. So like when I'm putting on my eyeliner but this is my pre game warp in prep and I used to wear like my brightest red lipstick. So do things that make you feel confident today it's not the right way because I'm like okay already. So you know do things that make you feel comfortable and confident about yourself. There's also the talk about power posing. So there's a lot of talks that power posing how many of you have heard know what power posing is? Okay it's basically like the Wonder Woman pose that you do. Like you know stretch out and take out a lot of space. It's supposed to like release testosterone to help you be more confident but a lot of studies has also say that this is not producible. So it's kind of like bullshit but I do think that it's good to like just help you relax a little bit and I pick up more space where your posture is right and you project confidence. Even nowadays when I speak my first few minutes I still feel damn scared. Like it's the pre game like oh my god oh my god oh my god. But as I get better at it the story that I tell myself is more different. I tell myself that I'm selected because I have something good to share even though I say we all say that I don't know why we're here but since I'm chosen must be somewhat legit. So this is a story that I really tell myself that if I'm chosen they already know who I am. They've done their research. I didn't hide anything. So if they think I'm worth it then I'm worth it and I'm gonna give them the best show that I can do. Right. So that is sort of the mindset shift. This in a big audience there's gonna be some audience who are very distracted. So don't care about them. Like really just care about the people who are engaged with your story because they want to hear from you right. And also like project energy. So when you start start with a smile. Hi everyone. My name is blah blah blah right. You start strong even though you're panicking just pretend just act. It's like acting right. Like you're like damn scared but still you know. Hi everyone. My name is and then you can continue on. So a lot of times it's just like the story you tell yourself and also it's also a little bit of acting. And I drink water. Oh yeah sorry. One more point very important. Usually right before I go on stage just right before I would drink water so that I don't it's almost like also I read somewhere but might be completely fake but I'm just good at bluffing to myself is the fight of flight situation. Sometimes when you're too nervous when you eat something in your body you're like oh you can actually you're safe. So I try to drink water and I also drink coffee before so that I try to be alert but you gotta pace your own like coffee intake because coffee I don't know about you coffee makes me pee. So there was once that I drank coffee right before I go on stage and by the end of it I was trying to explode. So that was fun. That was a good learning but I was somewhat awkward there. I think one thing that really helps me because I do get a lot of anxiety even I write before I go to stage 5 is one thing is to know is that the audience really wants to see you do well. The audience is not they do not bite they do not bark and the thing is if the audience really wants to tear you down then they are the assholes they're not you. So everybody wants to see you do well. Everybody is in the audience whether they're distracted or not they kind of want to they are secretly rooting for you you just don't know it. And one thing is I find it's good is to interact with the audience. So like when I delivered my talk I started off before I introduced myself I asked the audience how many of you in the audience has learned something hard in your life raise your hand. So this was what I did for my talk. So everyone else is kind of engages and lets people make a connection with you as a speaker and you're also kind of able to sort of like and we nudge them to be awake and respond to you. And so once you have their attention then you say and then you can introduce yourself and your topic. So that's so that's a trick that I learned at Toastmasters. Actually it's like speaking of which Toastmasters actually is a very good avenue for you to build up your confidence in public speaking because it's peer-to-peer mentoring. Everybody is there to learn how to speak. They're able to give a very honest feedback. I mean and you can try practicing your tech talks there. If that's it, it coincides with the project speech that you're that you're supposed to deliver because there's a certain education program that Toastmasters has as well. So yeah, you can consider joining that if you want to practice public speaking in general. And yeah, and generally like just get your peers to also like you guys are with you. So Renault, I think you raised the point that you mentioned watching other speakers' talks that day but like as most of us know a conference has a schedule. So this is more of a personal preference question. Is there any slot that you especially like or especially don't like? Because this is out of your control, right? I hate post immediate post lunch sessions and I usually get those. I usually get those in my slots. Like it's always like people people are full, they're sleepy and definitely they don't want to hear to anyone and those are the most difficult sessions that I feel. And for sure, I don't want to be the last session holder as well. I think it's okay for me to be the first session holder. It's completely okay for me but immediate post lunch and the last session holders I hate those sessions. Yeah. For me, I especially like the posty breaks slots. Yeah. Because right, if they say, for example, you take another slot, right? If you go immediately after another speaker, you don't have a lot of time to set up, right? So after this speaker finishes, you have to be there and then everything must be up within like one, two minutes. So I like like after a tea break, you can use the entire tea break slot to slowly connect like this, connect like that, start my ID, everything makes sure my resolution is correct, everything, right? I can spend like 10 minutes doing that. But you can't do that with any other slot, right? So I usually try to put that request to the organizers when they are scheduling. Then another slot, okay, I don't like to be the first slot. So it's like, usually you cannot see the mistakes that could be made by other people. But usually the first slot is always given to the keynote speaker. So yeah, so I never get that slot. Maybe not you, don't you? Yeah, not you, I don't know. Yeah, I cannot. Actually conferences have started doing that, like especially for these reasons that if you go immediately after another speaker, you don't have enough time to set this up. Then I guess usually the talks are for one hour. So 45 minutes is your slot and then 15 minutes. They do spare this kind of time for other speakers to warm up and then get ready for your talk. Yeah, so you mentioned a little bit about like watching the talks before you go, right? For me, I don't do that. I'm terrified, like what if the earlier talks are better than me? Then the bar is damn high indeed, right? So I rather like, I'll be in the room, but I'm zoning out. So soon you're trying to prepare for the talk. So like you'll manage my baby. In terms of slots, I like to be near the beginning or near the end because that's when people are not like zone out about other talks. So again, this is like kind of out of your control unless you find someone to stop it with you. Maybe that's a strategy. For me, it's like why I like watching other people talking in a way for sure so that I can figure out if I, I mean, I have done some last minute amendments by watching other people and those have been the most useful changes that I did in my presentation. And more or less, I mean, this is what I tell everyone and this is what I tell myself as well. I think Thomas was also saying the same thing. Don't take it too seriously. Like be professional about it. Be sincere about it. But don't be too hard on yourself that oh my God, what happens if I don't do well? Oh my God, what happens? I mean, I have seen a lot of people who screwed up on this stage. They made fun of themselves, but as an audience, I loved them. Like I loved watching them and I loved watching them, accepting their mistakes that okay, maybe something went wrong and maybe something like this happened and they are okay with it and they moved on with it. So I think don't get too hard on yourself that oh my God, what's gonna happen? It's okay. I mean, for sure you have something that's why you're gonna go up to that stage and deliver that talk, right? So just don't stress yourself out. Anything? Okay. Well, I guess this is a, if you have, you say you don't have, never mind. Has anything gone wrong in your talks before? Always. Which one do you, which one are you walking with? One that you feel is most, the most horrifying one, like top of the horrified list. So it was like one thing that happened to me, which I still find pretty embarrassing was, but I, so the very first tech talk I did at Junior Dev, I didn't want to show a live coding because it was work stuff and I was afraid that there would be too much sensitive information. I didn't go through all the checks. So I, what I did is I took screenshots and I blurted out stuff that is potentially sensitive, but I'll just tell them like this is what I did. I blurted out because it's work stuff and I cannot show you. But when it was showing to internal colleagues, some of my other colleagues that I watched my Junior Dev tech talk said, hey, why don't you do a live coding demo? And for me, I've never done a live coding demo before. So what happened was that the simulator that I was supposed to use wasn't working until like literally one and a half hours before I was supposed to present. So I didn't have much time to practice and on the dates, on the presentation itself, I wanted to demo. But I was so nervous because I realized I was talking to a lot of senior devs and I saw that they, something looked a bit bored. So I was, I was, in my mind I was thinking that how do I engage them? But it came to a point where I completely forgot to do the live code demo. Yeah, so that is like, and so at the end, I realized that after I was way past the point that I wanted to do a live code demo and in my mind, on stage I was thinking, oh shit, I forgot to do the live code demo. What do I do now? So at first I was thinking, okay, maybe I'll do it at the end. At the end, I realized, I couldn't figure out, it was not, I wasn't sure whether it was too late. I just didn't know how to stop it in at a point in time. And at the end, I was kind of beating myself up over it, because it was a chance for me to do live code demo and I kind of ruined it. But I realized, but after that what I learned was that it is good to insert a slide that actually says to what demo, and not somewhere in whichever point you want to show it, so that even if you are nervous and you forget like, what happened to me, there's a slide that actually reminds you, yeah, you're supposed to do the demo now. So you can actually say, okay, let me show you the demo. Cause the thing is the slides, like what I mentioned earlier, even though it's like try to avoid using notes, but sometimes the slides can be useful as pointers to you, even though they're not really like proper notes per se. So this is a very hard lesson learned for me. So yeah, I hope you don't have to make the same mistake as what I did, and yeah. More horror stories please. I'm not not so dead la. Yeah, so there's a few times like, I think there was a once there was a tag ladies event where expecting 200 people and the cable doesn't work. I'm like, holy shit, the entire event could die, but good thing, engineer.ag save our ass. They were there with extra cable, so you know, always make friends with Michael. Yep, we were like conference presentation, take make friends with Michael. Yeah, there are jokes that I say and they try to save myself, I just like died even more. So just move on, or there's stuff that, you know. Yeah, it's really just, I've even tried, like I said a joke nobody loves, so I tried this thing where I say like self-deprecating, where like, oh, actually that was a joke, but nobody, I guess I should probably stop saying it. But like, people don't get it too, so I do even get sympathy laugh. I was trying to go for that, like my bar was dead low, and then nobody laughs on her own. Anyway, you know, move on. So that happened, and I, because one of the few talks that I've given on was on my startup failure, like what my experience is building a startup, and it failed, what happened. And there were also points in time where it got so emotional that I almost wanted to cry on stage. That was also like, I won't call it a failure, but that could be disastrous if I didn't rehearse and do really like, moderate my emotions. That could happen. Yeah, but all you know, I really agree with what you say, that whatever talk you do, it's just one talk. And most people don't remember. Like, only you remember your mistakes. And so like, most people won't remember everything that I've talked about. And so just take it easy and have fun. Like, try a talk, and you will get better the more you do. So when it comes to like, rehearsing for those who maybe are your shitty colleagues or what, I'll be, yeah, I'll be happy. I think we should keep this community going. Like, if there's anyone who wants to go to talk, maybe we could just come together again and help each other rehearse. Or I'll be free to see how we can organize something small and we can just help one another to keep this going. Cause I don't think that this should be like, just a one day thing. I think this should be a culture of helping one another to become like conference speakers. So yeah, happy to volunteer and help. No ha, okay. Oh, she's not, oh, she's not. He's a professional speaker, nothing went wrong. The most important skill for climbing the career ladder in general. So it's a hard challenge as we all hear, but it's so worth it. I mean, I have countless stories of people that like after conference talks, suddenly we got a job here, there, did this. And it's always a step up. It's maybe the best skill you can add in general. So it's totally worth trying. And also free travel, like who you think got flown around to Europe for free? Hashtag chip Asian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just really good exposure, especially when you're paid to fly. Like they pay for flights and hotel, wow, then bought us, I made it in life. And then... Yeah, why don't you share a little bit more about your speaking experience? Because you are also... You really counter-contact. Yeah, you are like, like inter-regional speaker, wow. Yeah, tell us more about it. Okay, so I'm going to shorten it. I... Hashtag chip Asian. Don't want to pay to go for conferences. King Ming can understand. So I volunteered with this gentleman here. And one year he was looking for a host. And I'm like, I can host. Of course, thick skin, then... Personally, I know there are some people who feel hosting is more stressful. I'm the opposite. Because I feel hosting, number one, you don't really need to prepare. Number two, it's a good excuse for you to talk to speakers who otherwise cannot talk to. And then number three, nobody remembers you as a host because you are not the main show. So there was a really great way to get in for free. But like all jokes aside, what was the question? How did you get flown around to different countries? I'm also very curious, at what point do you all start charging for your talks? Like say, hey, you want me at your conference, pay me? For me personally, I've never asked a speaker fee. I've been lucky to have a couple of conferences who do that as part of their thing. They do give an honorarium. English is not my strong suit. For me personally, I don't know about the rest of you, but I had the people like Thomas, people like the organizer of a conference in Hong Kong called WebCon, take a chance on a first-time speaker because like you've never... So what's really nice about in Singapore, if you speak at a meet-up, engineers.sg records you. And that sometimes is a big boost for first-time speakers. Because as a conference organizer, especially for us here in Southeast Asia and we apply for Europe, America, it's not cheap to fly us there. They are taking a calculated risk. I'm investing in this first-time speaker hoping that, you know, he's going to be a good speaker. So I've had conference organizers jump on con call with me just to sort of like get a feel of how I am, how I speak. Having a video is a big plus. It's still accepted. It's a big plus and for myself, it was that first conference, it was that first exposure that people in the audience, other speakers in the audience, they're like, oh, I've never seen this person before. But after that, if you happen to do a good enough job, what gets around? And then like, I think what Thomas mentioned is that for us from being from this region, we, you can think of it negatively or positively. We are diversity candidates. For myself, I don't mind. I don't mind that I am the token, the token foreigner, because for me, I feel opportunities like this feel and far between. If they are there, I'm going to take it. So I can, if you want me to be on the token, if that gets me in the door, that gets me on the stage, that's good enough. Because once you're on the stage, then it's on you to be good. And about the ward getting around, I mean, it's so true that you go to one conference and there are the organizers from other conference present over there and after they'll be like, hey, you know, we are organizing something like this. We would love you to be on board on that conference and something like that. I mean, for me, I mean, I have, so I didn't travel world that much. I mean, I just, I'm from India and I came to Singapore and before this, I think I just went to South Korea. That's it. But with conferences, I think I did my Europe tour. I think I did my Russia tour and I think I did my US tour. So I think it's worth it. Otherwise, I mean, it's too expensive to afford. Yeah. So we talked a lot about speaking. One thing that Elisha raised is what happens after you've given your talk there are some things that it's not like you go on stage, give a talk and call it a day. I mean, you can, but I mean, there are extra things that you can value add to build for yourself as well as your audience. So since you were the one who raised the point, you may start talking about build your speaker portfolio. Like, things to do after you're done. You've given it everything, went well, okay, after stage. What do you do? Yeah, so I think that the first thing that you want to do after your talk is to make yourself available for people to approach you. A lot of times, after I give a talk, people will come up to me and say, hey, thanks for doing this. First, it's a confidence boost when they say that. Second, they might also come with opportunity. I would like you to come and speak to my school, I would like to come to speak at my conference, my meetup. So these are great ways to expand your network. Therefore, which sort of linked to my previous point, you want to, if you drink coffee to stay awake, make sure you time your coffee because there was once, immediately after I thought I ran to the restroom. By the time I came out, people were sort of left-ish already because they couldn't find me, so I thought I left. They thought I left, but no, just in the toilet. So little things might have some form of effect. So, be available to be around the event for networking session that is low-hanging fruit. Thereafter is, if you do have engineers.sg, shout out, recording your presentation, keep the link, you can share it on your social media, like, hey friends, I did this, what do you think? The whole feedback thing is a very soft way of promoting yourself. No, be like, hey guys, I did this, look at me, I'm awesome, but you know, hey friends, I just did this, I'd love to have your feedback, but if they watch it, they will know who you are and what you talk about, right? So there's also a subtle way of being promotional. So of course I have your own web presence, like your own website, or you can share it on your LinkedIn, so that sort of builds your reputation and helps with momentum, because a lot of times, a lot of times in my sort of like speaking experience is because like people know who I am or is one degree away. So like the conference organizer, they know someone and that's someone actually sort of like recommended me. So I did like, I'm very grateful for all the sponsors that I have who opened this kind of doors for me. So yeah, what else ah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bad. Okay, just like this, is this something that like all of you do, or it's just me? And you have like two steps officially to success, which is do good things and talk about it, but then the first step is talk about the talking. Yeah, so, okay, I think that's a good amount of time and thank you all four of my panelists that have somehow been duped into being on my panel. Thank you for going along with it. Hopefully, you are still my friends after this. When you see my name, please don't run away. Yeah, so... We do audience questions? Yeah, let's open it to the floor. If anybody has any questions for anybody, everybody can also ask Michael, Michael also counts. Yeah, anybody has any questions or not? I see a hand. I'm Nicolette. So, just now, we mentioned, and she asked a question about how long do the speakers take to prepare. And what we've got so far is what you prepare the day before. I mean, we just got a rough gauge of what you do to prepare, but we don't have a minimum period where you must prepare within this period. If not, you're going to screw up something like that. Is that a minimum range of periods? I believe this answer was very, so let's have everybody share their... I have an opinion about that. You can, we'll come to you, sir. I think the period starts even before you apply, before it's up to your CFP. So, by the way of doing it is that, before you even apply for the CFP, make sure that it's even possible to give the talk, because a lot of my presentations are on hardware. So, what I do is that I'll make sure the input and output works. The in and out, if both, okay, I'll submit the CFP. Then, if I get selected, I just throw as much time as I can for the in-between part. So, after submitting the CFP, then it's time to work on it. So, what I will schedule on is that two weeks before the actual conference date, I will rehearse in front of my colleagues. So, I have that two weeks buffer to make any changes you needed. So, you were the work by words, right? So, usually I'll take about one month also to prepare for the talk. So, maybe one month plus two weeks plus this one set can get a rough time, rough schedule. Yeah, for me, it's also about the same for a month or a month and a half. So, like, by when... Well, of course, like, when you're submitting a proposal, or like, you're bouncing an idea off someone making your pitch, you should aga-aga, like, roughly know what you want to say. And once you're selected, that's when I start thinking about my story arc. Like, the hero goes on a journey, what are some of my little monsters, I'm finding what's my final big boss, and the ending, right? Supposed to end on a high life, I can. So, I start thinking about that. And about two to three weeks before that, that's when I do the full rehearsal, like, in front of a live audience, or when I start recording myself. I think for me, it kind of varies a fair bit. I think it also depends on how familiar you are with the topic, because something certain... I've heard certain talks where they say, oh, I heard somebody else give a topic on this, and I wanted to explore this, hence, I want to... When to do research on the topic. So, that's what some people did. Now, I think on the same meetup that I delivered, my first tech talk, there was a speaker who was talking about, I think, the health report on the internet or something like that. So, he actually knows that he's also another junior dev, but he said he heard this at a conference, and he wanted to find out more. So, he went to research, and after that, he shared what he found out in the tech talk during the same meetup that I delivered, my first tech talk. So, there's something he can also do that you don't have to be 100% familiar, but in the process of researching, you also do, like, different iterations of your presentation. So, you don't have to do your presentation in one shot. You don't have to do all your preparation in one shot. Just so, like, you know how you have, like, sprints, and you don't build a product in one shot, and then you launch it. It's kind of like you build MVP, and then it's, like, 1.1, 1.2, etc., and all that. So, you just build, and then along the way, you just try to practice and ask for feedback. And then after that, you take all the feedback, and you build the next iteration, and you repeat. Rinse and repeat. Usually, for me, I like to do it a few months, at least start from a few months before you do it, so that it's a lot more relaxed. You don't have to rush. And you can just find, like, pockets of time, whenever you're free, to work on different aspects, maybe be it, like, the research, or be it the slides, or maybe be, like, no practicing, how to present different people. So, it's like, you just try it. Like, I like to do it at a leisurely pace, and then, so at least I don't get too anxious or too scared. And then also, it's like, the more you do it, the more familiar are the material. The less likely you're going to have to use notes, and more likely your presentation's going to be more natural. So, yeah, it's like, if you guys know agile methodology, just try to apply it to your own speech as well. I think it's very useful, especially if you're quite new to speaking in front of the audience. Now she's talking product management. So, I'm a strong believer in, if you have a great opportunity, but you don't know how to do it, still say yes, and then figure out how to do it. So, many times it has happened that I really liked some topic which I'm really, really interested in, and the CFP dates are very nearby, like the CFPs are about to close. So, I just focus on having a great CFP, and forget about what exactly the content that I'm gonna do, like the proper slides and everything. So, prepare a creative CFP, submit it, and then wait for it to get submitted, mean accepted, and then meanwhile, keep on learning about it. As soon as I get that, okay, your CFP has been accepted, actually for me, the very first thing that I do is I find the subject matter expert in that material. I usually talk on technical topics that I do on everyday basis, and I have great colleagues like who are the subject matter experts on that. So, I just sit with them. I run them through my idea of my talk, like, okay, this is what I'm gonna talk about, what do you think, and this and that. They give me some ideas, and then I prepare a rough presentation, and then I directly present it to my team. So, I kind of work it backwards way. Like, I have the rough idea, I present it, I get the feedback, and then I refine it, kind of that. So, and to my rehearse, it gets started like pretty early stages, in pretty early stages, but the final slides, they get ready by like just a day or two, maybe just on the day of the conference itself. So, I work in a backward manner, like just start getting the feedback earlier, and the more feedback, the more refined it will be. Okay, so it's actually quite different for everybody. And Mr. Gorson? So, from a conference organizer perspective, the question is really easy to answer. I think if you haven't put a lot of work into the talk itself, it's unlikely to become a great talk. It's just there's a direct correlation on how well we prepare, rehearse, how well you know the topic. You can know the topic, I mean, easy is if you know the topic by heart before you even apply, right? Those are typically the best talks. When you really know, like, from what angle? What do I really know and understand? Which is harder of a question than you might think sometimes to figure that out. What do I actually know? Whatever I've done and used and created that I really am the expert on. And everybody is. Like, it's not that somebody hasn't lived. You all have done something, and that might just be valuable. You just need to find out what makes that unique to you. It can also be something that you wanna find out, right? And you apply, like, what was your name, sorry? Reno. Yes, Reno said. And you just give yourself a challenge to figure it out before the conference. But you have to make enough space to do it well. I mean, we have crazy speakers at JSConf. I think maybe some of you remember Simon Swain. I mean, he puts more than 200 hours into his talk presentations. He quotes up unique environments to run his code in. He makes stories, he writes the whole storyline, and so on, and it's a nuts amount for talks. But the presentations become incredible. Like, they're just like, whoa. Also very unexpected. It's not like a quickly thrown together slide deck or anything. It's custom programming, like game programming and things like that. And we had some crazy, crazy presenters that spent a long time on talks. And you can see how, over time, the experience of having put so much thought into it really makes you more confident on stage, makes it an easier presentation, can make it more engaging, and so on. So I think there's a direct correlation. Any other questions? I have two questions. One kind of just come into mind, because I'm interested in how Reno prepares a topic that you're not originally familiar with and how to make yourself comfortable giving a talk after that. And my other question is, for the conferences you talk to, is there normally a Q&A session? And if there is, what if someone asks you a question that you're not sure the answer is? Fortunately, I know the answer to the question that you just asked me. So about the topics that I'm not very familiar with, how do I prepare for them? For sure, it's almost that it becomes a challenge. I don't want to just run through some topic and then give a shitty presentation in front of so many people. So I challenge myself, and I start doing a project on that. I always put that project on my GitHub, and then I guess it's usually, it's a month's difference between when you submit the CFP and when the actual conference happens. So you have a few months over there. And I think it's a fair amount of time for you to prepare deep enough into that topic. So the way I do is I take it as a project, I create a personal project on that topic. Like for example, nowadays I'm trying to learn about App Bundle, like it's a new thing in Android. We at Grab are not personally using it, but it's a very big thing in market right now because of the APK size increasing. I wanted to learn about it, and I wanted to speak about it. So that's why I submitted a few CFPs, but because I'm not using it on my everyday basis. So I created a personal project in which I'm using APK Bundle, and I'm learning through it like everyday. So I hope that my CFP gets accepted in some of the talk and I can give a presentation about it. So yeah, I mean, I guess hence on experience, you have to have it. You cannot just read the theory about some topic and then you can give a presentation, especially if it's a technical thing. You have to go through that shit so that you know that you know it, yeah. And about the Q and A's, I think it happens that sometimes there are so many experienced audience, people over there and they ask you a question which you might not be able to answer like it happens. To me, how I have tackled these kind of problems, I do not try to fake the answer if I don't know it. I upfront go and say that for sure I say it's a good question, that's the kind to put it. Like it's a great question that you asked and sometimes I use let's take it offline as well that we are running out of time. But yeah, I mean, we all learn these things right from other videos, but if I don't know it, I just say that I'm not very familiar. I mean, I cannot answer your question right now, but I can search about it and then let's get connected and then I can get back to you for this answer. Honestly, the audience on your side anyway. Yeah. Really, like I have not seen a single conference where the audience doesn't want the speakers to say it. Like they're all there for you. So just honest is fine. I mean, sometimes somebody else in the audience can also answer that question if they know it and it has happened. You can also decline the Q&A. Yeah. We had speakers before that were like, but like I don't want the Q&A. Like actually we don't, we barely do Q&A's anymore. Yeah, with reference to what Thomas said. Again, it depends on the format of the conference. For example, JSConf, we don't do Q&A's. Only the speakers specifically requested. Yeah, so it's not a norm. It's not a norm. There are also some conferences that do curated Q&A's, which means that the host or the MC behind the scenes will actually collect questions and then they pick the ones that sort of, because the MC is gonna try to, nobody wants to make you look bad. So they'll curate sort of the most relevant questions. So it's sort of more of a, if you had some things during the talk that you didn't have time to cover, they'll curate that for you. So in a sense, they're helping you. Again, you can also say, no, I don't want to do Q&A, that's completely legitimate. Most conference organizers will respect that. In fact, very few conferences that I attend have open mic like anything goes kind of Q&A's, to be honest. Not sure about anybody else's experience with Q&A's. So for the KofuCon, when I spoke at last year, I could see the questions that the audience, okay, they had to submit the questions through a web portal website. Then I could see the questions, all the questions that I picked, the one that I can answer the best. So because sometimes the MC may not have the contacts or may not be technically seven enough to know which questions are the easy for you to answer. So the MC just showed me her phone and, okay, I answered this question. Yeah, like about the question of submitting for proposals, actually I have a different point of view from Renault, like I would only submit proposals for things that I know. I'm confident knowing from a get-go, then I'll write proposal for it. In terms of Q&A, usually after a presentation, a Q&A, if you can answer it, answer it. If you cannot answer, just say that I'm sorry, I don't know. And it's completely fine, they would understand. But in a Q&A for a panel discussion, if you're also keen in that form of a public speaking panel discussion, discussion really depends on who the host is. So, I'm not saying you're here. Yeah, so I'll actually remind you what you should be doing. So for example, for panel discussion you get, the questions are usually pre-prepared. So just ask the host, like, hey, can I have the questions before that? And then think about what are some of the three points or the key messages you want to bring across. And what you want to teach the audience. Again, I have the audience in mind. There was a once, there was a sort of impromptu Q&A, and this person said, hey, I want, I love to have you go live, like a Facebook live, and we talk about tech ladies. And he started asking a lot of questions about Facebook, which at that point in time, that was not what I signed up for, and I was not very happy about it. So, when he asked me a question, I'm like, oh, I don't know about Facebook, but however tech ladies does this, this, this, and I say what I want to say. And then I blacklist this guy. So, right, it's not fair to bet and switch on your speaker, right? So, but I do understand that in certain events, the host or the moderator wants to be a bit naughty because it gives a good show, right? If you start arguing the speaker, it's like, you know, everybody can eat popcorn, right, and watch to it. So, it really depends on who, what type of event it is, and also what format the discussion is about. I think, right, if let's say you want to avoid having to answer the questions on the spot, maybe like, you know, at the end of the presentation, if you have any queries or thing you can reach out to me on my social media, so that all that email. So, this one is, you can kind of filter out what to answer and you have a bit of time to recover after the presentation to be able to answer the questions, or you can do research before answering. You don't have to answer straight away. So, it, and it also helps because sometimes some people may not have questions straight away or they have questions that they don't know how to phrase it. And by the time they phrase it, maybe the Q&A sessions are up and they don't have the opportunity. So, sometimes I think it's not something that I have done personally, but I have seen other speakers do it and I thought it was a very good way to engage your audience, but I don't have to engage it right away. Question? Based on like, first hand like, observations, so last year I actually went for panel discussion, like tech panel discussion whereby during the Q&A, there were actually audiences who were like, posting a lot of criticisms about the panel discussion in general and about the moderator. So, to put it in a more general context, how do you deal with the sort of like criticisms, like very harsh criticisms from the audience, especially when you're a speaker and then sort of things are quite live. Hashtag, how to deal with haters? It's okay, so just now I mentioned that in general the audience doesn't want to see you fail, but if they want to see you fail that way, then they are pretty much assholes. So, I think just know that when you are chosen, I think like what the panelists and Quijing has mentioned, if you're chosen to be a panel speaker or to be a speaker in general, there's a reason why they chose you and because you have something worthy to share. If people want to criticize you when you're up there, then you can tell them, okay, maybe we can take this offline because sometimes a lot of the audience they don't want to hear an argument. It's wasting everybody else's time and it doesn't make people happy unless it is maybe a discussion that is relevant, that's very, very relevant to what was being shared or presented, then sure. But I think the moderator in general should also be mindful when to intercept and say, okay, let's move on to another question or so. But if not, then you can just try to divert it to a different topic or say let's take it offline. So, are the audience, was the audience like combative by saying like, you're wrong, it's stupid, or is it like on Twitter? It's the picture, so there was a live Q&A and then people were using the live Q&A to criticize the entire panel. Okay. I'm really sorry that this happened to you, like it obviously sucked and I cannot imagine just the amount of stress and embarrassment. And fortunately, I do think that these seldom happened in the tech made up, yeah, I haven't seen it before. But I've asked people to leave tech like this event because they're a bit creepy and that happens. I think most times people are nice by to say that everything will always be rainbow and unicorns, that's a lie, shit happens and that's unfortunate, but that's real. So I think in terms of like, in general, anything that you want to do to step out of the norm, you will have praises and you will have criticism, right? That's just part of like standing out because you stood up, right? So that will always happen. Like for me, it's always been find your supporters. Like, okay, first of all, you have to evaluate what they're saying, does it make sense? Right, if they say that all your dress is ugly, I'm like screw you. So that is like, I don't care, that's your opinion, I'm fine, but it's the same thing that I've said that I found to be racist and sexist and I agree with them then. That to me is a constructive feedback, constructive criticism, whether how we find or unrefined the way they present their thought and opinion, right? I would take that into consideration but I won't let it affect me too much. So it depends on what they're talking about and also what the context is. Generally, you will find haters and as Lady Gaga says, internet is a toilet. Social media is the toilet of the internet. Yeah, so that happens, especially when it's anonymous. I suppose this is like a pigeonhole Q&A thing where you can't find who said it, right? Yeah, yes, I know who said it. Yeah, yeah, so that happens. Find your supporters, people who get you and would support you and the rest, you can just tune it out. Unfortunately, the moderator was female. So it didn't really, so my fellow friend, I, we were very uncomfortable with how that you had to tune it out. Yeah, that could also be a feedback for the moderator. I think moderator is almost like someone who encourages conversation and it's also the shield, right? The protector. Sometimes I question, people ask that. I felt it's not relevant. I'll say, thank you for your question. This is not relevant. Let's go back to what I want to talk about and just like divert, right? So the panel, the Q&A that I had about Facebook and tag ladies, I'll just say that I'm unable to comment on Facebook one of you, however, for tag ladies and then I just do my pitch, right? So sometimes it's diverting, sometimes it's feedback and sometimes it's just like, you know, just, just, this is an unfortunate event. Hopefully this is a one-time event and then you give feedback on how it can be improved and move on. I guess they pretty much covered it. Any other question? If not, can we applause the panelists? Thank you, thank you so much. So the next time I have panelists, please still come, don't see my name and run away.